DJYSRV

Am I the only person fed up with the proliferation of BETA products instead of commercial offerings? Worse, as firms fight for the appearance of competitive advantage with the latest BETA release, end-users drive up enterprises costs by installing unsupported products on their desktops. When the products don't work, and the work doesn't get done, who does the company blame here?

Here's a simple example, like many firms we convert engineering drawings used for reference only to image files so that users can easily access them. Well, when users sign up with the latest online photo service, in BETA naturally, and download an image manager, guess what, rendering the engineering drawings goes South because the photo software tool hijacked the file extension in Windows.

For a much better rant than mine on this subject see the WSJ for 11/28/04 "For Some Technology Companies, 'Beta' Becomes a Long-Term Label," by David Kesmodel.