Public Hardware Beta Tests

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday April 10, 2003 @02:02PM from the first-one-is-free dept.

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.

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Lemme at the gadgets!!! by rgbe · 2003-04-10 14:05 · Score: 0, Redundant

I'll be top of the list for beta testing pls :).
Beta testing computers... by Peterus7 · 2003-04-10 14:06 · Score: 0, Redundant

What next, the RIAA allowing people to beta test cds?
There go my chances... by navait · 2003-04-10 14:24 · Score: 0, Redundant

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.