GMail goes back to beta

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

Google may have brought GMail out of beta yesterday to allay the fears of business users, but it seems some GMail users are equally spooked out by the disappearance of that little beta tag after five long years.

Google, as ever, has the answer. A new GMail Labs feature called Back to Beta that “soothes the soul by putting the familiar beta sticker back on the Google Mail logo”.

Nice work.

(Thanks to PC Pro forum member MattLevy for the tip off)

Windows 7 Release Candidate: start from scratch or upgrade the beta?

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

If you’re one of the millions currently downloading Windows 7 RC, you’re very soon (well, I say very soon – if our experience is anything to go by, you might have completed the download by Thursday week) going to be presented with a dilemma: Perform a clean install or hack the OS and upgrade in place over the beta.

Microsoft’s installation instructions tell a little white lie. “If you’ve installed Windows 7 Beta on your PC, you’ll need to back up your data, and do a clean installation of the RC,” they claim. Not true. That might be what Microsoft wants you to do, but it is perfectly possible to upgrade your beta by following the instructions provided on Microsoft’s own Engineering Windows 7 blog.

Microsoft doesn’t want you to do this, of course, and for perfectly valid reasons. In the real world, when Windows 7 is finally released, few people are going to be upgrading from one version of Windows 7 to another. It wants as many people as possible testing the upgrade process from Vista, not discovering and reporting bugs from one build to another.  

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Windows 7: the Vista we always wanted?

Monday, January 12th, 2009

Like most of my colleagues, I’m feeling pretty upbeat about the new Windows 7 beta. I think almost every one of its new features and tweaks is a step in the right direction, and it’s already replaced Vista on my PC.

But what I find particularly encouraging is not just the code itself, but what it reveals about how Microsoft’s mood and methods have changed since the Vista launch.

For a start, Windows 7 shows every sign of arriving on time, or even early. That alone bespeaks a major improvement in Microsoft’s internal processes. Remember that Vista was originally intended for release in 2003, with a number of headline features that never, in the end, saw the light of day. Its successor, by contrast, is already so complete, and so stable, that many of us here at PC Pro are happily using it as our primary work OS. (more…)

The NeverEnding Beta (Google, 2004)

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Remember when Gmail first arrived? Unless you’re unlucky enough to be called John Smith you probably got the username you wanted first time, and without having to add six digits on to the end. Then you experienced the fun of sending invites to your mates so they could join you in your exclusive little club – after all, Gmail was still in beta, they couldn’t have every Tom, Dick and Harry overwhelming it before it hit its stride.

Fast-forward four and half years and guess what? Google Mail, as it’s now known, still has that little BETA label under it, and it shows no sign of buggering off.

Over at the Royal Pingdom they’ve gone through the whole Google catalog and counted the applications that are in beta today. While 22 out of 49 may sound reasonable – Google is always coming up with innovations, after all – when you realise that these include Google Mail, Docs, and Product Search, you have to wonder if Google interprets the word beta in the same way as the rest of us.

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