http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ Giveaway of the Day Forums Topic: GAOTD vs. Shareware en Wed, 03 Dec 2008 05:56:12 +0000 http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/1083#post-6186 Sat, 26 May 2007 00:21:27 +0000 BuBBy 6186@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Downloading a program, mucking around with it a bit, and if you see an error message or it crashes - scream at the developer.... is not beta testing. (not even close - maybe the screaming bit is, but the rest... no).</p> <p>Professional Beta testers are people who develop test plans - perform iterative testing for different conditions, values, sequences - and document the results. And then do it all over again to check the "fixes" actually "fix".</p> <p>Oh and one more thing - the companies aren't saving any money by getting GOTD users to beta test. If these companies didn't expect end users to "find the errors" in their software, they would just ditch the testing altogether. So either way - they aren't going to spend any money hiring professional testers or purchase automated testing software.</p> <p>To companies like this, "quality is an unnecessary expense". </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/1083#post-6185 Fri, 25 May 2007 23:54:40 +0000 BuBBy 6185@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Users will remember what was offered and the companies who were behind the offer.</p> <p>If the software doesn't work, or causes damage - the company will be remembered for that.</p> <p>If the software is fantastic, and the users needs and expectations are met, chances are good that users will want to continue this relationship and become registered users to obtain future versions of the program.</p> <p>Some users seem to expect the best edition of the latest version of the software with all the bells and whistles - but there is no reason why companies cannot offer a "middle" edition or a custom edition that isn't otherwise available. (For example if a company had a Free, Pro and Enterprise - they might want to give away a custom version with features that sits between Pro and Enterprise. But don't claim this custom version is "Enterprise")</p> <p>But at the end of the day - a giveaway company will reap what is sows. If it doesn't offer anything of value or offers something that breaks - users will say so, and (assuming this is a reflection of the quality of all their products) likely avoid using any of the companies other products.</p> <p>If a company is generous and offers something of real value to users - the company will win the custom and loyalty of users, glowing testimonials, and word of mouth that money cannot buy.</p> <p>Ultimately the decision how to play the giveaway game is up to the individual company. But if they aren't willing to go the extra mile to win over users - it is probably best that they don't even run onto the field - because the users can sense when they are being stuffed around with, and you don't want bad press for your company and products when there are tens or hundreds of thousands of eyeballs reading it.</p> <p>GOTD staff cannot possibly fully test every single feature of every program - nor should they profess to know what software all users want. It is their job to make the software available, write up the promotional material, package the downloads, keep the GOTD site up and running.</p> <p>If giveaway software has bugs in it - that is the fault of the company - and not the fault of GOTD.</p> <p>In most cases software doesn't run because something "is wrong" on the users PC - I'm struggling to remember a giveaway that just didn't work for anybody - but I know about a lot of the "individual cases" which are a lot harder to test for because they are specific to a users config or PC. </p> http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/1083#post-6180 Fri, 25 May 2007 18:02:57 +0000 pauloparra 6180@http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/ <p>Recently a developer offered a program and claimed that its cost was X dollars. In reality, the program was an obsolete version that could not even be purchased anymore and the software that really sold for X dollars was the newest version with more features and less bugs.</p> <p>If you wanted the newest version, you had to pay the price quoted on the GAOTD offer. The developers were blatantly lying about the price of what we were downloading and to make it worse you had to buy the actual software at the quoted price described as a GAOTD.</p> <p>It is no big deal. One can't expect all developers to play nice, but it has happened again at least twice. You have to realize that we don't only get software for free, the developers also get feedback and publicity for free as well.</p> <p>Developers offering 'beta' programs that don't even work or older versions that are outdated are not getting feedback, they are using us as free beta testers, a part of software development that is quite expensive.</p> <p>Sometimes it seems that the staff at GAOTD doesn't even test the software before offering it.</p> <p>Do you think I way out of line? Do you agree with what I am saying? </p>