I’m sorry if this question is totally naive, but I just want to double check here before purchasing, to make sure there’s absolutely no confusion on my end.
If you purchase a license for Scrivener for Windows now, for the first time (as in you aren’t an existing Scrivener user), will you have to pay an upgrade fee when Scrivener 3 for Windows exits beta? And if I purchase a license for the first time now, will I be able to use the beta version of Scrivener 3 freely until the official version is finalized?
Alright, thank you. This is what I thought, but I saw something about a 3 month window for mac users and I think that’s what was confusing me. If I purchase Scrivener now, can I have version 1 and the beta of version 3 running simultaneously, or once you upgrade to the beta are you unable to revert back to version 1? And if I set auto-save to save very frequently, do you think this would negate the risks involved with primarily using the beta software? The files would be synced with OneDrive frequently as well.
Mac is a different situation because there was no public beta for Mac Scrivener 3.
Win Scrivener 1 and Win Scrivener 3 use different project formats, so it’s not trivial to revert if needed, (The easiest way would be to find someone with Mac Scrivener 3 and use the Export as Scrivener 2 Project command. I don’t think the Win Scrivener 3 beta has that command yet.) You can certainly have both running side by side – and that’s what I would recommend – but using both for the same project would be hard.
Frequent backups are never a bad idea. But beta software can also do things like suddenly flat out refuse to run. Or some function you desperately need might be very buggy or not even be implemented yet. (I don’t believe the current Win Scrivener beta has a working Compile function yet, for example.) Not a happy situation if you’re using the software for critical work.
Thank you for all the information Katherine! I just bought a license and downloaded the beta and I’ll play around with it for a little while. Hopefully the beta will reach a relatively workable level soon (not perfect, but good enough for using it to work on major projects).