Sw paying for beta testers?

[FMAAID]

https://www.solidworks.com/beta

SOLIDWORKS® 2022 BETA 1 POINTS CONTEST
Official Rules
" Submission Guidelines:

a. The Contest Entry submitted must be created by the entrant alone and be the original work of the entrant.

b. The Entry must describe the Issue, include details of the business impact of the Issue, and all steps taken to troubleshoot the Issue.

c. Entry cannot be obscene or offensive, endorse any form of hate or hate group;

d. Entry cannot defame, misrepresent or contain disparaging remarks about Sponsor or its products, or other people, products or companies;

e. Entry cannot contain copyrighted materials, trademarks, logos (except Sponsor’s) or trade dress owned by others, or advertise or promote any brand or product of any kind, without permission;

f. Entry cannot depict, and cannot itself, be in violation of any law including any copyright, trademark, and trade dress laws."

One (1) 1st Prize: $500 PayPal payment

One (1) 1st Prize: $500 PayPal payment

One (1) 2nd Prize: $300 PayPal payment

One (1) 2nd Prize: $300 PayPal payment

One (1) 3rd Prize: $200 PayPal payment

One (1) 3rd Prize: $200 PayPal payment

One (1) 4TH Prize: $100 PayPal payment

One (1) 4TH Prize: $100 PayPal payment


I am at a loss for words

[mattpeneguy]

I think they've been giving "prizes" for years. I don't remember if it was actual cash or not, but I don't think this is new.

Maybe they should incentive SP testing, too?

[Merovingien]

for me :

20xx EV = You are the Pre-Alpha (or) Alpha-Testers

20xx SP 0 up to 5 = You are the Beta-Testers

then the product turn into a new year,

and yes the "SP 5" is still full of uncorrected bugs, but Dassault doesn't care about

and some bugs of course, exist since many many years... some are more than 10 years old...

Marguerite-Lewis Juge.png (63.22 KiB) Viewed 1120 times

Fonzy said : the happy-SW-days were arround the 2012...

Happy Days.jpg (15.5 KiB) Viewed 1120 times

[jcapriotti]

I think they've been giving "prizes" for years. I don't remember if it was actual cash or not, but I don't think this is new.

Maybe they should incentive SP testing, too?

Seems they switched from prizes to cash payouts.....simpler to deal with and after while people have enough 3dmice and other swag. I won the first year they did beta many years ago (2004?). I won an HP workstation as first prize. They then sent me a check to help cover the taxes as well. Other prizes were Nvidia/AMD video cards which in todays climate, might be a really valuable prize considering they are hard to come by.

[HerrTick]

Not going to play penny games with SW. If they want me, they know where to find me, and how much I charge.

[Peter De Vlieger]

They have been incentivizing the users for years to be their unpaid Alpha testers for as far back as I've been using Solidworks.

And yes, even a 500 USD price i consider unpaid because the only way you'll be able to earn that price is if you spend way more time on testing and documenting all the issues you run across then the next guy. This equals that the person that can spend 40 hours in a week on it will lose from the guy that spends 41 hours in a week, who'll lose from the guy that spend 80 hours in a week.

So 500 USD divided by the amount of time you have to spend on it to win it equals to less than you would give a kid to mow your 6 square foot lawn.
The price money is frankly an insult.
And that's if you are lucky enough to win it.
If you are not in the top 4 then you even get jack squat.

So we pay to learn the program, pay to get the documentation of the program, pay to get some movie clips showing us basic stuff (mysolidworks), pay to get support, pay to get the program, pay to keep getting the bugs fixed (SP's and yearly versions), and in the end we should be happy that we could perhaps maybe get some 'price' that is in no way a validation of the time to spend to win it.
Yep, I'm disgusted.