**FIRST EMAIL**/Looking for Beta Test Teams

[Akash Rastogi]

But this is exactly what FIRST and NI are trying to do by beta testing, they want to give teams the best product possible.

From what I understand, the way you made your statement it sounds like someone saying that Microsoft doesn't need to beta test Windows 7. Their software engineers should just come up with what they think is the best product and release it. What this would fail at is being evaluated by the consumer beforehand. FIRST and NI did the same thing. The beta testers were all expert "consumers" who made the system better and worked out flaws along with NI instead of FIRST and NI assuming things the teams would like. They made a better product suited for the consumer (the rest of the FRC teams) int he end. I can almost guarantee you that if there was no beta testing and FIRST and NI released the system to all the teams at the same time, there would be too many systems out in the community to get proper feedback and any problems would be chaotic to fix.

To the point- in the end, beta testing by a few creates a better product for the rest of us to use.