>It isn't just MS. For example, the software that the government uses to determine MediCare reimbursements has over ONE MILLION documented bugs. IBM at one time, and still may, had a policy that when the ratio of bugs to lines of code reached a certain point, the software was considered stable and released. It isn't just an MS issue. It affects every software developer and company.

No question about that. It seems as if the larger the company, the more QA becomes an issue as anomalies are alowed to slip through. This not only applies to software (e.g. Firestone).

>Again, I'm not sure additional QA would have caught this error.

The VFP7 thing is really no big deal. My point is that too much IT resources are being used to apply patches and service packs. For example, I know an engineering group who have spent so much testing and applying NT bug fixes and service packs that it will be a few years before they will even consider moving to Windows 2000, let alone XP. So who loses? Everybody.