It took awhile but this is the result of my testing:

(1) SoftwareKEY does not protect VFP EXEs and DLLs from being decompiled. This was a surprise because their website indicated that the EXE and DLLs were protected. I ran an EXE through their InstantPLUS process, and then used Refox 8.0 to look at the resulting file. All the code was displayed, beautiful as ever, sans comments of course. I emailed support at SoftwareKEY and received the following response:
". . . VFP 7+ actually just puts a stub portion of code at the start of the exe and the rest is all your code passed to the runtime. Unfortunately, Instant PLUS only handles standard 32-bit PE format (the format of most exe's). Since only the very beginning of the VFP exe is PE and the rest is the VFP code for the runtime, Instant PLUS can only protect that little stub at the start of the exe. So you end up with a lot of code that can be decompiled. Since the VFP exe format is different than most exe formats I would probably look for a product that is specific for VFP. We looked at adding functionality for the latest versions of VFP, but it would be a huge undertaking and we just don't have the resources right now."

(2) I put Armadillo at the end of my list because of reported difficulties.

(3) THE GOOD NEWS! MoleBox ( http://www.molebox.com/ ) appears to work fine. I am still testing but everything looks good. MoleBox lets you create a package that contains the EXE, DLLs, OCXs, and data files. I created a package containing ALL the DLLs (including the VFP runtimes vfp7r.dll, vfp7enu.dll, and vfp7t.dll, plus some assorted MS DLLs), config.fpw, and a .jpg used for the splash screen. In one of the tests I loaded the application to a clean installation of XP Pro SP1 and everything so far has worked without a hitch. Besides protecting the EXE and DLLs I can see the installation procedure will be simplified. The only downside is the EXE is now 7 MBytes, but I think that can be improved upon.

As an aside, I emailed Xitech (http://www.xitech-europe.co.uk/) twice and as of yet have not received a reply. The first time I was asking for the upgrade price from Refox 8.0 to the current version, the second time the price of KONxiSE. Both of these were sales related inquiries that should elicit a prompt reply. My gut feeling is that someday Xitech will simply disappear and we'll all have to look around for something else.