What do I mean by “paying for beta testing”? Well, many products seem to be released too early. Bugs galore still exist and buyers get stuck with a product that should still be in beta testing.
For example, the game X3: Reunion went gold on Oct. 17, released in the UK on Oct. 28. The on Oct. 28, there was the 1.2 patch. The U.S. release date was 11/5 with the 1.2.01 patch released on 11/11. For an example of a positive experience, I almost never see a Microsoft game patched.
Let’s look at Acronis True Image 9.0. I purchased this on 9/21 and since then there have been six or seven (too many to track) updates. Most of these occurred in the first month! Fortunately, I personally have not seen any bugs (knock on wood), but others have.
I’ve also seen iolo Software’s System Mechanic 6 go from 6.0c to 6.0p(!) since I bought it about 2 months ago. And in fact, the initial version, 6.0c, would not run properly on my PC. Every time I opened up Windows Explorer it would hang. They fixed this within 2 days, but how did this get out into the release?
On the plus side there is Raxco’s PerfectDisk 7.0. I purchased this last year (over a year ago) and it has had only three updates since then.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind one or two patches, but six or seven in one month’s time is too much. That, to me, means they aren’t testing enough at the developer. It’s not simply the spending of money on products, it’s that some products like backup software, antivirus software, etc. can get deep into the OS and crash or corrupt your OS if there’s a problem. That is something I don’t appreciate paying for.
