i never used a beta-release of a software before. is it “save” to use it for daily work - or is the beta just for evaluating and i should use the personal edition until the final release of devonthink pro is available?
and now my second question - i read some people are actually buying licences for the beta? i’m sure i will buy the final release, but i was sure a beta would be for free??? 
I have been using the pre-public release betas on a daily basis for months without any problems with my data. I would not anticipate that you would have any problems, but it comes down with your comfort level with using beta software. Having both the PE and Pro editions available was not a viable option to me, as a) the database format is different, so I would have to maintain both databases and b) Both applications use the same keyboard shortcuts in the Services menu.
The first public beta will not expire until 7/31 and I would expect that later betas will not expire until after Pro is shipping, so there is no requirement to purchase the Pro version while it is still beta.
My experience has basically been the same as Greg’s. Several months serious professional and personal use of Alphas and Betas without major problems and literally no lost data. DT Pro is very solid so far and I wouldn’t worry too much.
That said it always makes sense to keep regular backups … yadda yadda.
If you’re really nervous about your data , you might want to periodically export it all into a finder hierarchy and ZIP/Archive the resulting folders, if only for peace of mind.
So you can relax a bit: I’ve rarely seen Gold Masters this solid, much less betas.
Eiron.
I as a grateful user of DevonNote am thinking about upgrading to DT and would like to test the Pro public beta for this. I wonder if this affects my DN database or, even better, if I could use it with the DT beta (but then there would be no way back to DN, right?). Or can I use DN and DT on the same machine with different databases? The ReadMe warns about parallel use of DT personal and DT pro…
Thanks
elmi
I can state with considerable certainty that your data is unlikely to be compromised by using DTPro Beta. I have been using it since its earliest Alphas, right the way through the private Betas without any problems. In that time I have built up a solid database with (at time of writing this) 264,467 unique words, 26,321,519 total words, 21,231 rich texts, 2890 links, 569 HTML pages and 59 Web Archives. It’s rock solid!!
I would suggest though that it’s always sensible to do regular "Backup and Optimise” as I find if one does much web browsing in the application the files get very large if one doesn’t do that quite often. I imagine that’s down to caches building up.
Rollo