Speaking of dot coms, last fall I heard a presentation by Jakob Neilsen who is renown expert on web usability. His recommendation on testing for the web was to get five users and have them do actual work on your web site. By the time they run through their test, you will know if you are on the right track.

What does that have to do with the price of eggs in China? IMHO, I think it shows you don't need a huge number of beta testers to run an effective evaluation program, but it is crucial to test with real users. Doing so avoids "blind spots" that can frequently happen with internal testing teams. The real highly technical/methodical testing done in house. So what you are doing with the outside testers is checking for the end user/equipment interface rather than minutia. If you pick your beta testers well they will pick up on much of the detailed testing done in house, but they will occsionally pick up on other problems (usually minor and sometimes major).

Yes, they are late -- there's no denying that. But I have no any interest in dealing with any product that is under cooked. I manage an IT group that has an 800 node network and I don't like dealing with flakey or quriky equipment or software in our networks. We deal every day with PC software that is pushed out on the public way too early and makes us and our end users feel like we beta testers instead of end users. I don't have time or the desire to deal with stuff that works sometimes and not others. I want to be able to stick any disc in to my DVD or LD or whatever player and not have to worry about if this is one of the titles that does or doesn't work. So I see it as a good thing that Outlaw pulled their product back to get it closer to perfect.

I suppose if they go through all of this and the 950 still has significant problems with the feature set they have committed to on the web site then I would have a legitimate beef with them. But that's not happening right now. I for one am willing to wait for a clean build.

Just my $.02.

Eric