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Non-Tech : Any info about Iomega (IOM)? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sheila rothstein who wrote (54200)	5/6/1998 12:17:00 PM
From: Philip J. Davis	Respond to of 58324

Sheila, I don't know if Iomega calls the prototype drives "beta", but over 100 prototypes have been shipped to potential OEM's for testing. Here is a clip from Michael Coley's post about the shareholder's meeting: >>More than 900 Clik prototypes have been produced, and "hundreds" (probably 100-150) have been shipped to potential OEM's.<< Philip

To: sheila rothstein who wrote (54200)	5/6/1998 12:29:00 PM
From: jhild	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 58324

Sheila, there are three terms that I am familiar with in regard to testing. Beta is substantially as you described. There is an Alpha testing, which to me means the earliest stages of testing, where you would be working with a prototype and just trying to make it work in the first place. Sometimes a product will substantially work upon the first mock up and this can be a very short phase. Beta testing, in my experience, refers to using the product in live environments according to how it is anticipated it will be used. Bugs that arise in this stage may undergo several iterations of retesting until all serious flaws have been identified and dealt with, sometimes even being just left as is if the flaw isn't serious or is expected to be corrected in the final product production. I have seen the use of Gamma testing, where I think the testing is on units of an initial pre-production run of the product. This step as I have used it is really just the final checkout of the product - to make sure that nothing glaring or serious is in the product to be finally released. If all is well, these may actually be just shipped product. If there are serious enough flaws then there may or may not be another round of Gamma testing. I think that it is hard to judge where clik! is in this sense, because it depends on your frame of reference. The eval units themselves have in all likelihood been through a beta testing phase, but not in the sense that they may have been used in a digital camera and they may require modifications to be adapted to that use. This is all my personal experience and I know that different companies employ different standards to these phases of testing. So results may vary in terms of terminology use.