What Is a Beta?

When software vendors work on a new or updated program, they perform extensive in-house testing of the new version. This is called alpha testing, and each new version of the software-in-progress is called an alpha.

A beta, a term you've probably heard used 3 or 4 or 20,000 times or so, is a later version of the prerelease program that the company distributes to outside users for testing and feedback. The process of third-party distribution, testing, and feedback is called a beta test, and the users who put the program through its paces are called beta testers.

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Because the alpha test is an "in-house" procedure, many a wag has dubbed the beta test an "out-house" procedure. Also, because software with even the most thoroughly tested alpha and beta versions behind it will still ship with more than a few bugs, other wags (or possibly the same ones) have taken to calling the released product the gamma version.

The software industry has used the terms alpha and beta since the early 1980s, but they date back to the 1960s in the hardware world. In fact, the terms are thought to have originated at IBM in the early 1960s and come from that company's use of the terms A-test and B-test for the initial testing of new hardware components.

Microsoft first started beta-testing its software in the early 1980s, and almost all of its operating systems have run through a beta-testing cycle (the possible exception is the original version of MS-DOS). The old DOS beta cycles had perhaps a few hundred testers, but in recent years the Windows beta test brigade has mushroomed. The Whistler (Windows XP) beta test had a whopping half a million users, who combined to discover tens of thousands of bugs, big and small. The numbers in the Longhorn/Vista beta test have been even bigger. Although the first beta was distributed to just 10,000 users (but was also made available to a few hundred thousand Microsoft Developer Network and TechNet subscribers), it was estimated that up to 2 million people would take a crack at Beta 2, the first build made available to the general public.

What do Windows beta testers do? Those of us who take our beta-testing duties seriously end up doing quite a bit, actually. You have to install each beta, of course, which is no small feat in itself because you have to download a 3GB file, burn that file to a DVD, wipe everything from your test machine, run the setup program, and then tweak your device drivers, depending on the level of driver support in the beta you're installing. Then you need to fill out an installation survey and possibly a hardware survey. Then, most importantly, you need to use the operating system in various scenarios to see if everything works the way it should. If it doesn't, you need to submit a bug report to Microsoft. While you're doing this, you also need to read and participate in the beta newsgroups, follow or contribute to the periodic live chats with the developers, and try out the "feature previews" and report your results. Add to this the necessary (but not for the beta) tasks of studying Microsoft's whitepapers and briefing notes for all the new technologies, following the blogs related to the new OS, keeping tabs on the Microsoft "rumor" sites, and all the while writing up your findings in such a way that people such as yourself will know what to expect. It's hard but very satisfying work, and one of the more tangible results of it all is the book that you now hold in your hands.

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There's a popular and appealing tale of how the word bug came about. Apparently, an early computer pioneer named Grace Hopper was working on a machine called the Mark II in 1947. While investigating a glitch, she found a moth among the vacuum tubes, so from then on glitches were called bugs. Appealing, yes, but true? Not quite. In fact, engineers had already been referring to mechanical defects as "bugs" for at least 60 years before Ms. Hopper's discovery. As proof, the Oxford English Dictionary offers the following quotation from an 1889 edition of the Pall Mall Gazette:

"Mr. Edison, I was informed, had been up the two previous nights discovering 'a bug' in his phonographan expression for solving a difficulty, and implying that some imaginary insect has secreted itself inside and is causing all the trouble."