Windows One Care in “perpetual beta”
By Marc Perton
I recently got something odd in my email. No, not a spam offering to help me get rich by investing in penny stocks (that’s not odd; I get those every day). What I received was an offer from Microsoft to join the Windows One Care “perpetual beta.” The offer was apparently sent to some participants in the One Care beta, and amounts to a free subscription to a service that will cost everyone else $50 a year. Now, I’m not complaining about the offer. Free is good, right? But is it really a good idea for Microsoft to refer to this as a “perpetual beta?” After all, what does it say about a product’s reliability if it’s always in beta? Even Google, known for betas that stretch for years, eventually removes the tag. And, though One Care beta participants will get early access to new features, the bulk of the program will be the same one that other customers will be paying $50 for. Of course, there are those who would argue that Microsoft—and other software companies—have been charging consumers to beta test their products for years, and it’s a good thing that they’re finally coming clean about it. Still, from a marketing perspective, Microsoft would probably be better off calling this “Extended Feature Testing” or something similar, lest the wags have a field day with it. In perpetuity.
I recently got something odd in my email. No, not a spam offering to help me get rich by investing in penny stocks (that’s not odd; I get those every day). What I received was an offer from Microsoft to join the Windows One Care “perpetual beta.” The offer was apparently sent to some participants in the One Care beta, and amounts to a free subscription to a service that will cost everyone else $50 a year. Now, I’m not complaining about the offer. Free is good, right? But is it really a good idea for Microsoft to refer to this as a “perpetual beta?” After all, what does it say about a product’s reliability if it’s always in beta? Even Google, known for betas that stretch for years, eventually removes the tag. And, though One Care beta participants will get early access to new features, the bulk of the program will be the same one that other customers will be paying $50 for. Of course, there are those who would argue that Microsoft—and other software companies—have been charging consumers to beta test their products for years, and it’s a good thing that they’re finally coming clean about it. Still, from a marketing perspective, Microsoft would probably be better off calling this “Extended Feature Testing” or something similar, lest the wags have a field day with it. In perpetuity.
July 6th, 2007 05:15
[...] a year ago, I got an email from Microsoft offering me a chance to participate in the Windows One Care Perpetual Beta program. At the time, I opined that, while it wasn’t a bad idea to create a pool of testers [...]