What's better to use at the grocery store--paper or plastic? When we asked that question, we received five thoughtful answers within 10 minutes. We received three times as many answers--albeit, less thoughtful ones--in half the amount of time at Yahoo Answers, which is publicly available. When anyone with a Windows Live handle can access QnA, we expect the results to be much different.
Windows Live QnA beta users have four days to provide answers before a question becomes closed. Once the answering ends, people can vote for the best answer. We found four days to be a short window of time, especially because the closed beta testing limits the amount of potential users who might reply to you. Yahoo Answers, on the other hand, gives your question a full week before replies are sealed, and you can request an extension.
Microsoft provides assistance in the form of a searchable online knowledge base and a table of contents.
We ran across beta glitches when using the Firefox Web browser, such as links that occasionally didn't work. Still, Windows Live QnA worked well for us overall, and we're interested to see what the final product will look like.
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