If you were offered a free DL of Lightroom 4 beta..

[MOmilkman]

would you DL it? I know they are looking for input but what's the catch?

[Elmo]

NO catch it will only work until the official release. They offer it for every major release.

[Rentham]

The catch is you must wear your tin foil hat to use the Develop Module.

[kirbinster]

The catch is its a beta and not ready for prime time. Anyone can download it and use it free of charge until the release of the final product. You don't even have to let it contact their server or share any data with them, but they would like you to do that. It lets them have many people put it through its paces and determine problems with the product that otherwise might not be found until after the product is sold which would make many customers less than happy.

Think of it this way, you get to use it for free but they get lots of free testers in the process.

[zona5101]

i've downloaded betas in the past - no catch, just as Elmo says...it will stop working when the final release is public. I'm not too keen the LR4, I don't see that is has that much more than 3 that I would want and I've read on the adobe forums of crashing issues that I don't feel like dealing with during beta.... we'll see what everyone is saying closer to final release...

[ravncat]

It may have errors or things, so avoid doing your main work in the beta, its good for testing and for a new catalogue. You can use your current LR catalogue, but if there's an error and it's corrupted, that would suck.

They may take data from your usage - and they hope you participate in the forums and report bugs. Otherwise no catch.