Thanks go to Simon Barker of Zath.co.uk for hooking me up with a Joost Beta invite. If you would like an invite, drop me a line and if you are nice I will hook you up! The quality of the player is amazing, but remember that this is still beta level software.

Many people seem to think that when they get into a trial like this, the software is supposed to run seamlessly, or, that it may have a few minor issues. The fact is, any beta release will more than likely have many minor issues and a few MAJOR issues. If you want your issues resolved, you must report them in a way that will allow the developer to reproduce and observe the unexpected behavior.

The folks at Joost have set up a pretty user friendly and extensive support structure with support forums and a knowledge base which is more than I have seen with other beta released software. Do yourself and the developers a favor, when you report a bug, if you want it to be addressed, give them enough information to take the report seriously.

Remember, there is absolutely NO value in hearing the following:

• It doesn’t work
• It broke my computer
• Joost doesn’t run on my machine
• Every time I blink, my machine disappears… is that because Joost screwed something up?

Standard things to include in any bug report:
Make sure you have verified the bug and have figured out the steps which must be followed to reproduce the unexpected behavior.

Make sure you include the EXACT steps to reproduce the issue when you report the bug.

For example:

1. Launch Joost by pressing Start -> All Programs -> Joost -> Joost
2. After Joost launches click the close button
3. Get an error message stating “whatever the error message is”

Also include any relevant hardware information, the best way to gather this information on a Windows OS platform is to run the dxdiag from the Start -> Run command line by typing in dxdiag then after the diag has completed analyzing your system, you can click on the Save All Information button and include the resulting text file in any correspondence with the company you are reporting the bug to.