What does “beta” really mean??

Comments

1. Rob F (1 comments.) says:

   7/26/2004 at 3:50 am

   I’ve been using Gmail for the past few days and it has one of the best webmail designs I think I’ve ever seen. It is well thought out and has unique usability features that I had never imagined, some of it could be compared to a messenger system since it would actually be very easy to chat with another person that way obviously with all your history backed up in the 1gb space.

   I’ve only experienced a couple of glitches, but could have been related to a server timeout when I didn’t receive an e-mail confirmation and I ended up hitting it repeatedly only to find out after that I’d sent each and every one of them.

   I also get the feeling that there are more features yet to come and they won’t bring it out of beta for a little while yet. Another thought about beta means that they will not charge you for it. Gmail isn’t going to be a free service so don’t get your hopes up though it will probably be worth the small fee they ask.
2. Adam M. (8 comments.) says:

   2/14/2005 at 12:27 pm

   I’m a bit late to the party. Followed a link to a post about Subscribe2.

   Anyway, there’s an old joke about software which goes “‘Alpha’ is from the Latin for ‘it doesn’t work.’ ‘Beta’ is from the Latin for ‘it still doesn’t work.'”
3. Ozzie (3 comments.) says:

   10/4/2005 at 9:05 am

   @Adam: seriously, where did you get that?
4. Balfour Barry says:

   8/18/2012 at 5:11 pm

   Hi Mark,

   If beta can be closely functional as that of a ‘non-beta’ then why declare it beta then?

   Balfour Barry

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

1. James Laidler » Blog Archive » To Beta or not to Beta says:

   7/30/2007 at 12:11 pm

   […] The BBC’s given this product’s release a lot of hype and only a small proportion of users will understand what ‘beta’ means. […]