Today we're going to talk about the cutting edge vs. the bleeding edge. A continual dilemma manufacturers face is to fully develop a bug-free product, or to get the product to the market before (or sometimes to catch up with) a similar product by a competitor. "Normal" testing of a product would have it pass from the vaporware stage to an in-house alpha testing stage, then to a limited public beta testing stage, and finally, after most (hopefully all) of the bugs are worked out, to the mass-market. In this age of technological leaps and bounds, it could be said in some cases that a product didn't have enough testing before it reached consumers. Although sometimes this doesn't adversely affect the manufacturer or the product, sometimes it does. If an incompletely tested product reaches market and proves to be full of bugs or defective in some way, not only will the product develop a bad reputation as unreliable, but also possibly the manufacturer as well. On the other hand, if the manufacturer and product are fortuitous, they won't encounter too many issues and will have the appropriate look and feel of innovation.

So where do we, the consumers, fit into all of this? It depends what your definition of 'cutting edge' is. Some people would say that to be on the cutting edge means upgrading to the newest technology the moment it comes out, or even when it is merely in the beta testing stage. This is what I call the 'bleeding edge' however, because this is where you're literally throwing caution to the wind and allowing yourself (and your equipment) to become the guinea pig. With an independent piece of hardware, this typically only costs you testing time and maybe even money if it does prove to be unreliable equipment; however, with computer related software or hardware, bugs could prove to be very damaging indeed! The right (or wrong, in this case) configuration previously unencountered by a manufacturer in their testing could be the one that causes a user incredible problems, up to and including a system crash. However, please, please don't take me wrong here: I'm not trying to scare anybody away from new products or technologies in the least. Personally having beta tested software and hardware myself, I can say most often the problems encountered are just minor, often irritating ones that merely result in work delays and troubleshooting that are of no consequence outside of the product being used. A product that has seen thorough testing - as is most often the case - is unlikely to exhibit any deleterious behavior. But if you don't have time for delays (i.e. you just want the stuff to work), then you might want to wait until a product has seen at least a couple of months of real world testing in the market before adding it to your arsenal. Furthermore, certainly be aware that a beta version of a product isn't the manufacturer's intended final working version, and that the word 'beta' definitely implies, at the very least, "use at your own risk."