I am with TTJ here. When hearing 'beta' I think along the lines of 'essentially finished, but potentially buggy and lacking polish'. And even with the word 'beta' being used from anything as a cheap excuse on something that has been properly released (web 2) to something that may have been considered 'alpha' a few years back, _I_'d like to keep using the word 'beta' in that traditional sense.

After all it is a useful term that makes a meaningful statement about the software. Without it – or a reasonable replacement – how can we reasonably talk about the state of software that is being development?