The Beta terminology has been distorted by much larger organizations wishing to drive interest in their newest releases. Since they have much larger resources, they typically perform both thier Alpha and Beta phases in the background with increasingly larger test groups of 'trusted' users they've developed over time. By the time these products reach the final Public Release phase virtually all the true 'bug's have been discovered and removed, with the final Beta really closer to the Release Candidate phase with only polish and rare minimal bugs that affect small pockets of users. Since the larger organizations recognized the public interest driven by 'new' releases, they've also learned to take advantage of this buzz and so purposefully release these products as 'beta', driving huge amounts of public interest and installations.Originally Posted by Donald Thomson
Spybot S&D Betas have always been much more real, with significant bugs and even many product interface questions needing user input. This simply reflects the smaller organization that they are and thus the closer relationship between the developer and you the user. This also implies that the potential for danger to your system, which all products claim you need to assume during a Beta, might be higher.
With a malware removal type of security product, the potential for system damage is always high, so the danger is even more real. Thus you should always use only the release versions of the product unless instructed otherwise by that organizations own support. In other words, "Beta does not mean better".
Bitman
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