quote:
Originally posted by botpet
I think this team doesn't have enought beta testers. There should be PUBLIC Beta versions, and this way more bugs could be revealed. And people may be less upset and could try the beta version, and if they are not satisfied can switch back to 4.9 ("fully compatible version" - fully compatible Plus! button [it does nothing] 
). Forum also have Bug report section, anyone could write about the bugs there, and maybe the final "bug-free" version could come out earlier.
Sure, why don't developers just throw their creations straight at the public so the whole world can help testing it? Unfortunately, things don't work that way.
First of all, there are very good reasons to go through a private testing stage first. When a new build is compiled, it could contain massive bugs which may potentially affect a lot of users and may even result in a loss of data.
(Cookie can testify this. Poor Cookie.) If such a build would be released to the public, it could harm thousands of computers and destroy the reputation of the program forever.
Also, most of the users won't test the program properly. They'll just run with it, use it like they're used to and don't care about the features they don't use - potentially missing a bug. If they would find a problem, they probably won't even go to the forums to report it but go complain somewhere else which makes it impossible to track the issues. If they'd manage to find these forums and create a thread, it's very likely that their report will be very vague and doesn't provide much interesting details such as system information or step-by-step instructions on how to reproduce the problem. I'm not saying that every user is like this, I'm talking about the "average" user here. Private beta testers not only make detailed bug reports, they also go through the whole features set trying out every possible combination and pushing the software to its limits. Heck, they'd even mess with their files and registry if they had to and see how the program reacts. A very rare breed indeed.
Messenger Plus! 5 information
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