What Is A Beta Release?

Before a piece of software is made available to a wider audience software developers usually release a set of Beta releases that allow the potential audience of the application to provide feedback before the final release is made. This feedback usually includes details of parts of the application that do not function correctly on their specific hardware or details of changes they would like implemented. Beta releases however by their nature usually contain problems, are feature incomplete (for example, unable to import previous settings) and may not be compatible with any existing version of the application installed. This generally means Beta releases are not recommended to be installed in a production environment or by inexperienced users. A more detailed explanation of what a Beta release is and the full software release cycle can be found in the Related Links section below.