Alpha, Beta...

I'm playing with a ton of beta software these days, much of it great:

Windows 7 RC1, Build 7100. Its great, really, and has been rock solid and run without a glich, in a refreshing contrast to my older Vista installation. I'm definitely buying it when it comes out.

I'm eligible for a $30 version of Home Premium, due to my graduate school poverty level existence, but am still not sure what to do about the netbook, which I also threw Windows 7 on in a fit of total geekiness. The RC1 expires in March. It may be time to buy a real laptop with a Windows 7 upgrade. Or try Ubuntu.

This is no longer available, but the RTM version of Windows 7 is out on October 22!

Thunderbird 3 Beta 4: The search function is awesome. Since Postbox came out of beta and then wanted $40 for their product, I've gone back to Thunderbird. I'm glad I did, as its open source, free, extensible (well, the 2.x versions, anyways), and supported by a community.

http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/downloads/

Zotero 2.07b.2: I love this. See the previous post. I'm recommending this to everyone who has to wrestle with citations, bibliographies, and research management. Zotero.org

Evernote 3.5 alpha: I'm out on a limb here with alpha software testing, but I like it so far. No crashes and Evernote puts out frequent updates and bug fixes. In general, Evernote still has a ways to go to catch Microsoft Onenote's text editing abilities, but its search capabilities and multi-device input are pretty great. A comparison of Evernote and OneNote is definitely on my agenda. Evernote.com


Beta (and alpha) testing is pretty fun and you get to try some neat stuff. One word of caution: back up early and often. Its not a question of if something will go wrong, its when.