A pre-shipping release of hardware or software that has gone through alpha test. A beta version of software is supposed to be very close to the final product, but, in practice, it is more a way of getting users to test the software in the first place under real conditions. Given the complexity and ambiguous standards in the PC industry, it is impossible to duplicate the myriad of configurations that exist in the real world. See alpha test, beta test, release candidate and dog-food.
 | Reproduced with permission from Computer Desktop Encyclopedia. Copyright (c) 1981-2009 The Computer Language Company Inc. All rights reserved. |
Additional Resources
- Thunderbird 3: Near-final version due next week
- Thunderbird 3, an update to the email software Mozilla hopes will give it some of the advantages its Firefox browser has enjoyed, is due to arrive in near-final form next week. Thunderbird 3, an update to the email software Mozilla hopes will give it some of the advantages its...
- News items 2009-11-06
- Google Wave: Has potential, but let loose too soon
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- Discussion threads 2009-11-03
- Chrome 4.0 gets beta release
- Just an observation -Google now joins those other browsers that seem to "borrow" some would say nick features of Opera, yet Opera remains, with a small seemingly never growing following. The addition of speed will end soon, as gains like this always meet their limits. When all of the...
- Discussion threads 2009-11-03
- Chrome 4.0 gets beta release
- Google introduced the bookmark sync feature for the developer-preview version in August, and now it is also in the better-tested beta version, Chrome 4.0.223.16. More people will get a chance to try out bookmark synchronization with Monday's release of a beta version of Google Chrome for Windows. ...
- News items 2009-11-03
- Mozilla goes back to the beta with Firefox 3.6
- Oh bother. Does this mean Firefox 3.5 is buggy and insecure?Having used Firefox since 0.6 I find 3.5 to be one of the less stable versions. I hope that they get the bugs out for 3.6.3 things this version must have or it may fall too far behind1. SELinux/AppArmor...
- Discussion threads 2009-11-02
- Mozilla Firefox 3.6 beta 1 (Mac)
- Firefox 3.6 beta 1 Namoroka is the first developer milestone of the next release of Firefox. Namoroka is built on pre-release version of the Gecko 1.9.2 platform, which forms the core of rich internet applications such as Firefox. Please note that this release is intended for developers and testers only....
- Software downloads 2009-11-02
- Mozilla Firefox 3.6 beta 1 (Windows)
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- Software downloads 2009-11-02
- Ubuntu 9.10 = easiest, cheapest upgrade ever
- Worst OS ever! You should read what Dana Blankhorn had to say about your beloved linux! I'll give you a hint, its not good. I can't believe they would release a distro with known harddrive bugs. I'm going to laugh at you when you lose all your data due...
- Discussion threads 2009-10-29
- Ubuntu Karmic Koala launches to mixed reviews
- Not released yetKarmic koala hasn't been officially released yet and the bug that this article was talking about has been fixed for the official releaseMultiple hard drives issue already fixedThe problem only affected the 64-bit version of the release candidate, and it has apparently been fixed for the final release.wowwow,...
- Discussion threads 2009-10-29
- fp Plugin 2.5 (Mac)
- Using my own fp multi-precision engine, fp Plugin for REALbasic adds two new data types, BigInteger and BigFloat. Except for available memory, there is no limitation on the size of a BigInteger. BigFloat is a multi--precision floating point number. You can set both the internal precision and the decimal output...
- Software downloads 2009-10-28
- Microsoft makes final version of Windows compatibility toolset available
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- Blog posts 2009-10-27
- Sergey Brin: Chrome for Mac still unstable
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- Discussion threads 2009-10-23
- Sergey Brin: Chrome for Mac still unstable
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- Blog posts 2009-10-23
- Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Beta 3.0 (Windows)
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- Software downloads 2009-10-23
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- Discussion threads 2009-10-22
- A Forrester interview with Steve Ballmer about the SharePoint Business
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- Blog posts 2009-10-22
- Windows 7: An impressive upgrade
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- Discussion threads 2009-10-21
- Firefox's crossroads: Cutting-edge or mainstream?
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- Discussion threads 2009-10-21
- AMD rolls out 8 new Athlon CPUs in time for Windows 7
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- Discussion threads 2009-10-20
- How long until Windows 7 market share beats Mac OS X Leopard/Snow Leopard?
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- Discussion threads 2009-10-20
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