RDC beta expiry irritates users

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 01 April 2008 09:24

Business IT - Technology

Beta 2 of Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection 2.0 client for Mac has been generally well received by users, but its expiry is causing some angst.

If a beta's expiry date comes before the release of the final product or a later beta, the company typically refreshes the beta with no changes other than a delayed expiry date. This happened with the Office Open XML converters for Office 2004, for instance.

But it seems that's not going to happen with the RDC beta. Instead, users will have to wait for the final release expected by the end of May, which could mean nearly two months of irritation.

David Liu, Microsoft's program manager for Mac RDC said "there will be no beta3. I'd like to get the final release out to you guys at the earliest possible date, and that is where we are putting all our RDC team resources."

The problem is not that the RDV beta stops working completely - full functionality remains available - but each launch is accompanied by an "out of date" message suggesting an upgrade to the (currently non-existent) final release version.

That wouldn't be too bad, but the program fails to load the selected connection file, and that's what made some users hot under the collar.

Fortunately, there is a workaround.