>>>>>I am a very dissatisfied customer. M$ bought Fox for all the wrong reasons - to get hold of Rushmore, to have a horse in its stable to parry Borland's Dbase IV, and (the reason it kept developing it) to get hold of half a million programmers who'd be buying their tools on and on. While some of these had loyalty to the owner of the product, many (including me) are loyal only to the product itself, the gruntlement (now a word!) being proportional to the treatment of the product by its owner.
>>>>
>>>>IMO those were all valid business reasons. Cold maybe, but just business. No company is in business to be our eternal pals.
>>>
>>>Yet the same company expected us to remain their customers and keep buying programming tools from them.
>>
>>Can we really complain about the longevity of Fox?
>>I started using it in 1986 and still use it.
>>I have some clients that will use it till it some event occurs that makes in not usable.
>>If that's not long enough, what is a reasonable expectation of longevity?
>
>Perhaps they had only one byte available for the version number, thus ran out of space and didn't want to admit this stupid consequence of the initial design and made up some other reasons. But I guess they could have continued with 9.1, 9.2, ..., 9.9.1,, etc. or 9a, 9b. :)
>
>1988 ... wasn't that the year that Windows was introduced? Along your line of reasoning all extra years that Windows is around are bonus years?


Peter;

Windows 1.0 was released November 20, 1985. I still have my floppies for Windows 286 and 386. Microsoft supported Windows 1.0 for 16 years after the initial release date. Version 3.11 was sometimes stable and almost useful, compared to previous versions. Microsoft had a version of DOS (4.X) that was garbage! Well, it would make garbage of your data! But if you love microsoft, who cares what happens to your data? :)

With each promised delivery date of a new version of Windows, microsoft has promised such wonderful things for all users. Do not hold your breath! If the latest greatest version of Windows has problems - not to worry (as they say in Jamaica). The next service pack will solve all problems. After five service packs have not solved your problems then just wait for the next release of your favorite microsoft product. It will do everything you can dream of! It will even sweep the floors, clean your dishes, and put you to sleep.

Do you know why your Windows based computer sings a little song (just a few notes) every time you boot up? That means that Bill Gates bank account has increased by another million dollars. We have to keep him happy so we can all enjoy his offerings and visions. :)

Tom