Beta place annoys me

time to read 2 min | 299 words

I don't know how many of you have run into the annoyances of Beta Place, this is the first time that I'm downloading a Microsoft beta from this site. All the previous betas were open ones, which didn't require registration.

Let's start with the list:

  • You must register (beyond Passport), I'm not certain why, since they already has my details in Passport, but that is common enough so I would need to comment on.
  • When you are finished registering, you have to wait 24 hours. Presumably for human to approve you, this is less convenient than it should be, but still acceptable.
  • In my case there was a glitch, and I had to register multiply times in order to get the required access.
  • When you finally get to the point where you can actually download the files, you realize that Firefox is not working :-(, I just got a bgValut.asp file which didn't really help. I tried Explorer, but it throws a generic VBScript error that isn't very helpful. On a hunch, I tried to run Explorer as administrator, and there I realized. You need install an ActiveX control in order to download the software. I don't know what plain http/https are not good enough, but some warning would've been nice. It was very frustrating to be so close to the software and not be able to get it.

That being said, I now has Monad install so I can play with it. :-)