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.

Comments

Yeah...

[Junior J. Junior III]

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?

Re:Yeah...

[anthroboy]

The sad part is that it's been common practice to beta-test far more dangerous products than not-ready-for-prime-time cars... I mean, if FDA mandated "clinical-trials" aren't the pharmacological equivalent of beta-tests, what is?

Re:Yeah...

[Evil Adrian]

Whatever happened to releasing a product when it's ready?

It's a good idea to give a product to the public to test; the geeks get their new toy early, and will use it and abuse it in new and creative ways that the engineers wouldn't have dreamed up.

It is impossible to know, with 100% accuracy, in which situations a new piece of hardware or software will fail. Extensive testing, no matter how careful, still will not catch all of the problems. So, they test and tune, and release it when they believe it is ready.

Subsequent usage of the product always yields problems -- which is why we get things like recall notices, software patches, etc.

Many (not all, but many) companies really do try their hardest to release a good product. Good products mean a good image, more profits, and not having to deal with irate customers.

Time spent fixing a broken product is time taken away from working on a new product -- companies want to minimize the former and maximize the latter.

Beta testing is the side effect

[Planck0]

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.

OGG

[The Ape With No Name]

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!