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Public Hardware Beta Tests
orangerobot writes "Commercial software companies have performed public beta tests of their products for quite some time but more recently Philips Electronics has started holding public betas of new consumer hardware gadgets. A few months ago it was the Streamium MC-i250, and now it's their iPod clone the HDD-100. Public hardware betas seem like a great way to do a bit of marketing and user testing at the same time maybe more companies will pick up the same idea." This seems like a great idea for a company wanting to collect usability data on their interfaces, so that the release version can be tweaked.
And when I get killed "beta-testing" a not-ready-for-prime-time automobile or something, that'll be really great!
Whatever happened to releasing a product when it's ready?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I'll be top of the list for beta testing pls :).
..a BMW M5 and I'll tell them my opinion via postal mail ;)
Must-not-watch TV!
What next, the RIAA allowing people to beta test cds?
I once got a free internal DSL modem from Efficient Networks because they were beta testing the drivers on their new internal card on linux. Very nice of them, I hear the card was expensive.
What signature defines me as a person?
Having just filled out the form, this is a win win for Philips. Only 50 people will get the hardware, which costs them next to nothing.
But when they get out of the deal is thousdands of people filling out pretty detailed information that they normally wouldn't fill out in the hopes of getting something for free.
Good idea.
Gee thanks! I had signed up for the beta test and
now I've got the entire slashdot crowd applying --
there go my odds of getting one...
I need 50 lucky people to beta test my new bungie cords
You will need to sign a waiver, naturally.
Now I'll never get into that HDD-100 beta test.
Nothing from nowhere I'm no one at all
I've been developing computers (laptops and now tablets) for a while, and I love the idea of beta testing.
For the most part, I find that beta testing allows us to get extended product use cycles in a short amount of time, allows people to find problems that we wouldn't otherwise find right away, etc etc...
By allowing people to beta test, it is like hiring a X number of person QA department for free. And usually, those beta testers are more energetic in finding problems cause it makes them feel important and they approach the product unlike my engineers do who have been looking at it for months. Personally, I get (sometimes get) sick of staring at my product after I leave work since I've been staring at it, and its problems all day long. But beta testers find beta testing a challenge to themselves to try all possible combinations and procedures in hopes of finding a bug.
So, as far as I am concerned, from a eningeering manager stand point, the beta testers for the most part are extremely helpful, so long as they return useable data.
Let me know when you all finish filling out the application. I quit when I saw that the 3rd page had what looked like at least 20-30 additional questions. Forget the beta-test, what Phillips is really looking for is a lot of data points on a a huge market research study - I'm sure they could care less about the actual beta-test itself.
Full credit to Philips Electronics for trying something new. I hope they get some valuable promotion and some excellent feedback from these tests.
__
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Why can't these companies support formats that don't suck? MP3 and WMA are great if you're short on space, but with 15 gigs i'd be hard pressed to fill that up. They either need to support a lossless format like FLAC or even Shorten, or even better release an SDK so the users can code the support in. Hard drive mp3 players should not be marred by low quality music!
Well, for about $3,000 you can come close. You should think about the BMW M driving school. I took it (free when you buy an M car) and it was so much fun. About 10 minutes were instruction in the class room, and the rest of the weekend was in M3s and M5s on the race track. And they don't care if you abuse the cars. In fact, they even encouraged me to drive so fast that the M5 might fly off the race track. And they were more excited about me spinning in the grass than if I had totaled a $75,000 BMW.
If you have the time, and the spare change, I HIGHLY recommend the BMW M driving school.
Yeah, like Winamp, the iTunes clone, Geocities, the dotMac clone, or IE, the Safari Clone?
Sheep.
Screw helping out the company, I want free stuff!
This page was generated by a Barrel of Circus Midgets, and that is the way I like it!!!
Go to Akihabara (Electric Town) in Tokyo most any day of the week, and you'll see shelves loaded with 'beta' hardware. The shear amount of goods that never see the light of day, otherwise, is nothing less than amazing.
...and if you're one of the fan boys getting a woody over it, then that's you. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
This latest action, by Philips, is simply a marketing ploy for the uneducated consumer.
Something new, dual icons? Anywhoo... Looks like an interesting test, i took the time to fill out the long survey, which is probably more imortant to them than the actual beta test. This looks a lot nicer than me Archos jukebox, but my main selling point on an HD based mp3 player is capacity, is it more than 20GB?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Remeber when Gates demonstrated how easy it was to install a USB scanner on Windows 98 at a presentation, and promptly Blue Screened it?
He remarked, "That is why it hasn't been released yet."
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Great!!! Now that this has been posted my chances of being selected will be infinitely smaller.
I think H{ and others need to do this with PDA's, The Toshiba e740 was the beta for the e750....and that sucks. At least that is the way it worked for me.
Gorkman
Well there go my odds of getting picked, posted on slashdot ;)
seriously, though, this is very smart of Philips. Every person who applies to test (or basically recieve free) a mp3 jukebox fills out several pages of product preferences. It wouldn't surprise me if getting tens of thousands of surveys (and email addresses) is more important to them than 50 people testing their hardware.
It doesn't look like an iPod, and Apple wasn't remotely the first to put out an audio player with a hard drive. Plus, this thing can apparently record from audio in, which might be very cool for some applications if the quality is there.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Damn it...I had signed up a while ago for a similar beta test, so about a week ago I got an e-mail for this one. I figured I'd sign up as I probably would have a descent chance at getting some free hardware to play with. Lets see what the chances are a after a good slashdotting. >:(
Wow. They said OGG... That would be nice. Open souce codec, and they are willing to build in support. Wow. I am just speachless. Maybe we are making more headway than we have previously thought.
Now my chances of getting a free player are non-existant! (I got the email from being on their beta tester list like a week ago, but now I have almost no chance)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I actually got an e-mail a few days ago about this "beta test". While I'm all for it and realize that it does provide Phillips useful feedback on their product, I just wanted to point out that the beta test portion of it is really a beneficial side-effect of what they're after.
The actual reason Phillips is doing this is to get people to fill out the very detailed survey regarding what you look for in a portable storage device like the one they're beta testing. They ask what features are important to you, what price you're willing to pay, and other information that's much more valuable to them than the manufacturing cost of 50 or 100 units.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for this (after all, I filled the survey out), but let's realize that they're not trying to give 50 or 100 units away to geeks, they're really just trying to decide where to invest research and development.
Practically every first-generation product I've ever purchased has been a beta test. It's to the point where I'll hardly buy anything if it's "Rev. 1.0" or "Rev. A."
They just cut out their QA budget, let the customers rack up the losses and complaints, and feed it back into R&D.
...
Companies have been doing this for years. My physics teacher in high school ten years ago tested beta and concept appliances for IBM.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Too bad they didn't do a "public hardware test" on the Ford Pinto before it was released en masse.
Many people's lives would have been spared had Ford not rushed this product to market.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Look, even if it is just a shot in the dark to get a beta slot on this program, go ahead and fill out the form anyway and be sure to ask for OGG Vorbis support. Maybe they will look at it the stats and say "hmmm" there's something to that and support the open source format!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
And exactly how do you expect them to get it ready without testing it? Magic Pixies?
(I think this is a good idea... get some real average users who can contribute real life experience in using the product... rather than shipping something out and finding out people hate it, it doesn't work, and it just sucks)
All the benefits to corporations that people are pushing is all BS.
All the supporters of this are people who want free stuff.
Just like all the supporters of gnutella just want free stuff.
It's not about anything else.
A week ago I got an email about this and signed up, but now I have practically no chance!
I rented a Hyundai with a bad transmission, now if that is not redundant, what is?
Fight Spammers!
I am so glad that you have started posting stories again. It is much better than that homo Timothy (whom we all hate) posting repeat stories and moderating like a hawk. Does he seriously have that much free time on his hands or is it that all the local middle schools are aware of what he really is and have posted his picture up as the lovable yet surly paedophile? To coin one of your popular culture phrases, "Inquiring minds want to know!"
Top things that you DONT want to beta test.
1. Parachutes.
2. Invasive surgical procedures.
3. Seat Belts.
4. Condoms. (Whoops, it broke. Now was that a Yes or a No to my "Do you have herpes" question?)
5. Pot Holders (So, on a scale of 1 to 5, how badly would you say you were scalded?)
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Whatever happened to releasing a product when it's ready?
Some issues, like usability, do benefit from a beta. The more morons you expose a product to, the more likely one of them will report a usability problem. Remember the "butterfly ballot" problem in Florida? A well conducted beta would have changed history.
Beta users volunteering to test a product that isn't dangerous is a good thing.
-MotherJones
So it wasn't even to where they would have a beta test phase yet.
Seriously, I am getting sick of buying something like a Mp3 player and having to flash it's rom a few times with newer firmware before the damn thing works right. Really, overall flashrom is a good thing, but it sure seems to make some developers lazy when it comes to releasing working products.
As far as I can see, the only innovation Apple did was pick a 1.8" hard disk instead of a 2.5" hard disk to save size (and greatly increase cost), and eventually add some rudimentary PDA functions.
After filling out their lengthy survey (slim chance of being 1 of the 50 now that it's posted on /.) I can tell you why they do this. The "application" is basically a marketing survey. They'll get tens of thousands of these surveys completed, and it only cost them 50 devices.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
i knew a guy who beta tested their local network mp3 player/internet radio thing a few months back.. he really enjoyed doing it, and got to keep the product afterwards.. the company got good feedback, he got some nice hardware, and everyone was happy... and for them, getting the huge demographic data isn't a bad deal, either
--Less Thinkin', More Drinkin'...
I hate buying electronics because they never have some feature I want while having a bunch that I don't. If manufacturers would release stuff that's programmable, this wouldn't be a problem.
For example, my watch is a plain Timex thing with a timer and chronometer I never use but 3 alarms that can't ring depending on the date. If I could buy a good watch that let me fiddle with it and fix the things I don't like, I would pay extra. Timex does have watches that can download from your computer but they seem pretty closed.
Manufacturers should open source their firmware (or at least let it run user made binaries) so user communities can make the hardware not suck. My RCA Lyra could run executables but only supported the proprietary formats that RCA wanted. That sucked. Now I have a CD MP3 player that only plays non-variable bitrate mp3's, it sucks too. If I could just put a dir on the CD called bin or something with all the decoders, display controls and hacks I wanted, I'd easily pay a premium for the privilege.
Try applying to centercode http://www.centercode.com.
Pretty neat way of collecting emails for mailing lists.
Props to Phillips on this one.
In another grand attempt to rewrite the language, the phrase "Beta Test" shall replace "Martket Research". Now with the added side benefit of completely duping the geek community into working for marketoids at not cost!!
We truly are stupid.
It sounds like fun
But they sold it anyways. Morals weren't high on the list of standard features I guess.
The parent post by Naikrovek is very important, for those who would rather see the industry standard for hardware playback move to an non-patent encumbered muscial format
As an appendum, as well as marking OGG support as "important", the last question allows a choice of what is the singlemost important feature of all the things on the list. This includes the option of setting "OGG support" as the singlemost important feature for a device (which it is for me).
as someone who studies marketing and org. comm. i found the "eligability survey" philips required very suspicious.
The questions they asked were more or less market research questions and I found it difficult to see the relevance that those questions might have in determining a persons ability to test a product.
I could be wrong, but I suspect they use these signups as a way to whore people into providing marketing information such as demographics etc.
I speculate the actual hardware test itself is a front for this.
--
|-_-| . o O ( bEef!)
6. Privacy
Beta-test participants grant the right to use and publish their name and state online and in print, or any other media, in connection with the beta-test. Acceptance of a Philips HDD100 Recording Audio Jukebox constitutes permission for Philips and their advertising and promotional agencies to use beta-test applicants' names and likeness for advertising and promotional purposes without additional compensation. You further agree that Philips can use your personal information as described in Philips Privacy Policy.
The really sad thing is that Ford hasn't learned a thing from this. They are still building cars that catch fire when struck from behind.
Everyone should go onto their site and fill out the survey and say that Ogg support is important... let them know that we want it!
Looks like what's a bit late?
Ignore me. Somehow I read that as March, more than once. I'll go away now.
The commercial amusement industry has done this for years. They develop a game/large machine, put it on location, and they use the simple "how much money's in the box" to determine how to price the machine, what needs to be fixed, or even whether to put it into production. It helps because you get a fresh perspective outside of your internal testers. Glad to see the hardware market starting to embrace this technique, as it could save them a lot of money on not producing a shitty product.
since when was it may yet?
From the 'beta questions' - yeah *right*, Mr RIAA
4. How many MP3/compressed audio files do you have on your following devices/
media format?
PC (More than 5000)
Portable Hard Disk based MP3 Jukebox (1000)
MP3-CDs (200)
__________
Gotta go, doorbell ringi-
http://milkshake.dexy.org
But how good do you think your ears are? Have you got 20-20000Hz hearing? I must say I think most audiophiles over estimate their ears. I got a mate that says it's about feeling the sound.. I think he is bsing.
.. there are some aspects that count when making the mp3s (you must do it right!):
Encoding mp3s on 256kbps or more I must say is impossible to hear the difference on on my Hifi (which is supposed to sound really good). But
The encoders are not equal in quality and you must encode using the right settings.. There are several reviews around... http://www.r3mix.net/ got some good comparission of mp3 encoders and guidelines to encoding mp3s.
Find nice cocktail recipes @ www.spitzy.net
Philips has been doing this for well over a year and a half. I still get their emails every few months about their new product that they're beta testing, and happily ignore it.
Don't let some marketroid take your personal data. Don't become a statistical probability of purchasing.
I agree that hardware like this needs beta testers, but this is not a beta test. This is a marketing survey. By the time these people get the units, they will have already been designed and have entered manufacture. Based on the folks feedback, they will change the way they market the units and their target audience to make the most sales. The will; however, not change the product to better suit users unless it's a simple matter of software or other firmware related problem.
The beta test, if it ever happened, was probably conducted months ago by friends and employees of Philips. If they had actual users participating in this program, they'd probably end up very frustrated at the pre-relase quality of the product and give Philips a lot of bad press or something... which brings me to the point of how they select users to test --- it's a fucking sweepstakes! They should just say what they mean "Be one of 50 people to win this unit slightly before it is released!" If they wanted a real beta, they'd probably want to select from canidates that are actually qualified to test it, or try for a good mix of people. Selection at total random for a "beta" program is extremely bogus.
~GoRK
Are there any /.ers who actually *recieved* something from the Philips beta test, or do you know anyone who did? It would be helpful to know whether or not this is for real, or if it's just a scam to fill up demographic charts.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
In the USA product safety listings (UL, ETL, etc.) are mandatory for practical purposes. While products can be sold without the approvals, installation and use of unlisted products frequently violates OSHA regulations and state or local electrical codes. In Europe, manufacturers can self-certify for their "CE" mark--but that's not a product listing and won't pass muster with OSHA. Then there's the exposure to product liability suits if the product hasn't had a third party review (such a review doesn't make you immune to suits, but failing to obtain one supports a plaintiff's claim that the manufacturer was negligent).
Likewise, electrical interference characteristics must comply with the regulations. In the USA, self-certification for emissions is possible for most products (though you need the data to back it up). Personal computers are a notable exception to this: all major components used to assemble it (case, PSU, MoBo, and add-ons) can be tested and certified, or else the complete system must be tested and certified if any non-certified components are used. In Europe self-certification is allowed, but the testing is is more comprehensive (both emissions of and susceptibility to interference is required for the CE mark).
So unless the device is quite trivial, the "public beta" will require essentially complete product development--probably 100% for hardware, with the "beta" component being firmware for the embedded micro-controllers.