Beta software is kind of a love/hate thing to me. I love seeing a good piece of software being perfected before my eyes. For example, my RSS NewsReader of choice is NewsFire. I love it! Its exactly how I would have made the application look if I wanted or knew how to build it. — So I happily pay the $ for it and go about my buisness.

I recently heard that the dude behind it was working on another project called Xtorrent. So I ran to his site and got myself the public beta download. And guess what, its great too! I’m not a big user of that type of thing, but I do have an addiction to Top Gear which I can only get off the BBC and since I’m in the States, that’s a problem. Thus, something like Xtorrent suddenly made my life easier! (Don’t worry … I’ve bought TONS of Top Gear stuff so they’re still making money off me! )

But here’s the problem … too many people consider Beta to mean “perfect and free.” I see it all over the place. Whether its people complaining that the beta software they downloaded is crashing their PC, or people being frustrated that they suddenly have to pay for software they’ve been using for a while … and not getting that the previous version was BETA!

Its such a big problem at my company that we’ve had conversations about calling our own development applications something other than “beta” when we’re trying to get people to test them. Any suggestions? My favorite is “not a chance in hell of being released until you each find about 8 bugs in it.” — But that’s a bit long.