Do you use LabVIEW but not apply for the beta?

[Matthew_Kelton]

As others have said, I cannot do "real" work on a beta version, hoping not to run into a major issue.  That means I either have to use my personal time or time spent doing other work related activities to participate in the beta program.  If I tried to develop new code, I would end up just playing with the new features and not really checking the existing features.  If I decided to just upgrade customers code to the beta for tryout purposes, it would better test the beta, but would require toolkits and would consume a lot of my time trying to determine why the beta version is not working crashing, etc.  It just becomes too time consuming, and I don't see any usefulness to NI if I can only spend a couple of hours a week on it.

At my old job, we were involved in the beta program for LV 5 or 5.1.  I was excited about it, but when it came down to it, working on customers' projects came first and I probably didn't spend more than 10 hours playing with it.

I actually think the direction LabVIEW has taken recently with new features also discourages me from being excited about new versions.  While there are always some nuggets for the more advanced, exprienced users, NI, in my opionion, is focusing their efforts on making it easier for new users.  I generally have little use for many of the new features in a release.

[Coq_Rouge]

I like labview a lot but I agree with Matthew K (1 kudos from me). I remember a while ago that NI was having a advertising campaign with the slogan “Get measurement ready in 30 seconds” (or was it 30 minutes ). Such functionality may be good for the beginner. But I as an advanced user find this functionality seldom useful. I have almost never used express Vis. And what about the new cursor functions introduced in version 8. Some of my costumers have actually specified to use non Labview 8.0 styled graph cursors. They do not look good

[RTSLVU]

I can echo many of the others reasons, mainly just not enought time in the day. Having jumped from LV 5.1 to 8.xx in the past year or two I am having anough trouble just getting up to speed with all the new enhacements. I am probably still only using 10% of LV's potential here. As far as Express VI's I find them too difficult, confusing, and often poorly documented to use. 

[alex.]

The front panel control not looking updated.

[RavensFan]

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turbot wrote:
The front panel control not looking updated.

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????

What are you referring to?

[janki]

I have used Labview 6,7.1 and 8(for some time only).

Now after a big break I am using 8.6.-- but truely telling, I found labview 6 -- very convinient. just with right click on block diagram and whole functionality is in front of you, now every time i have to open that programming window and do coding-- not like it.

for beta, sorry was not aware of. will try.

[altenbach]

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janki wrote:

I have used Labview 6,7.1 and 8(for some time only).

Now after a big break I am using 8.6.-- but truely telling, I found labview 6 -- very convinient. just with right click on block diagram and whole functionality is in front of you, now every time i have to open that programming window and do coding-- not like it.

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If you have programming issues, you should probably start a new thread asking about it.

I am sure there is an easy solution once you explain what problems you are expeciencing in newer version. For example I don't know what "Whole functionality" or "programming window" means in this context. 😄 Are you talking about palettes?

[rex1030]

Usually I do not bother testing beta programs, especially for work. There are just too many risks for not a lot of payoff. If NI refuses to garantee that the beta works well, they are garanteeing it doesn't work well. So, it doesn't make sense to develop an important project in an environment that has a lot of bugs. As far as being able to suggest improvements to Labview: With the exception of 8.6, pleas for useful features in the open forums go largely ignored (do not yield actual changes in the program) so why would users waste their time hoping their suggestions would be considered in the beta forums? For instance how many years went by while users were asking for a block diagram cleanup before something was implemented? 

The risks of beta testing outweigh the benefits.