As people are effectively only being charged for receiving a product which will be exactly the same when the website goes live, I think it is fair to charge a comparable fee to what will be used later.
ah, but theres the rub - it WONT be the same product when it goes live, as it will have benefitted from testing and the corrections of exposed (logic) errors.
I'd rather be incented to do their testing, than to be 'rewarded' in a few months time.
Its actually an industry defacto standard to acknowledge the time and effort in some such sort of way ....
Fair enough, Newf, I completely understand your point of view.
I guess my lack of knowledge in this area (my only beta experience is one online computer game!) might be responsible for my naivety when it comes to what I should expect from a beta version. However I am seeing the 'test' as more of an opportunity to get early access to something.
It might not be as easy to find what I am looking for (but that is free anyway), but if there is something I find I want to download, I am happy to pay for that. It is just as valuable to me as it would be when the site goes live and from my perspective getting my hands on it earlier more then compensates me (especially with my Ancestry subscription running out soon!) for doing their testing.
