Pardon me? Are you suggesting that ALL buyers should buy only after having participated in the beta testing program?

No. You complained about not having any opportunity to beta test VFP. I was merely pointing out to you that you did have the opportunity to do so but chose not to take advantage of it. That being the case, I cannot for the life of me understand what you are complaining about.

In that case, let me rephrase it: VFP is an off-the-shelf product and I have not participated in the beta testing program.

Again: your choice.

I could also suffice with writing: VFP is an off-the-shelf product.

So are you saying that since VFP is shrink-wrapped software that it should be bug-free? Or are you saying that, because VFP is shrink-wrapped software, that anything that anyone might consider to be a bug should be addressed by the manufacturer at no cost to the customer? I must be missing something. Do you know of any software manufacturer that does this?

Last year I have missed the news about the new MSDN-channel. It was Sergey who pointed this new option out in THIS thread.

I have never used the MSDN channel so I cannot speak about it. I can tell you that earlier this year, one of my clients needed to install SP-1 and was unable to do so because he had had the public beta intalled on that machine earlier. When he called PSS to obtain help, he spoke to Trevor and got great support that helped him resolve his probelms - and he was not charged for it because it was his first incident. Now, keep in mind that this guys is not a full time VFP developer, not did Trevor know that he was a client of mine. But he still got prompt and effective reolution to his problem. As a matter of fact, after my client told me about it, I sent Trevor an e-mail thanking him for treating my client so well.

Now, keep in mind here that I am not saying that real bugs in the product should not be fixed. They should. And to the best of my knowledge, when you provide Microsoft with a reproducable scenario, they do get fixed in either in a serivce release or a next version. I am just having trouble undertanding the nature of your compliant.

There have been several bugreports posted by me over the last year or so to vfpfeed@microsoft.com. I must say that in the beginning I got responses. The more recent reports have NOT been answered.

And were your earlier bug reports really bugs in the product? Or were they bugs in your code? Just curious?

I have also recently tried to get in contact with one of the devteam developers though his website. No response at all, not even after a reminder some weeks later. Mind you, it was a request for some info only that I need to finish a tool for the whole vfp-developers community.

And would you be able to find this information by searching MSDN or posting a question on one of the plethora of public fora that exist in cyberspace? Was this Microsoft employee the only person in the world with access to the information that you needed?

I do not wish to be unkind, but I can tell you that I a get constant stream of unsolicited e-mail requests for free consulting advice. Some of these requests are for charities, tools to place in the public domain, and so on. So the questioner is not going to make money from my efforts to answer the question. Do you really think this matters to me? This is how I earn my living. I already donate several hours of my time doing free peer-to-peer support in several different on-line communities. Therefore, I never respond to these unsolicited requests. If someone wants assistance, they should post the question on a public forum where others can benefit from the answer and they have the oppotunity to receive responses from several people who may be able to provide assistance. I have seen several MS employees on the UT. Perhaps if you had posted your question here, you would have received a better response. I know that if you had e-mailed me directly with a question, this certainly would be the case.