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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 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.
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.