Regarding why people do, or do not upgrade:

There was a French psychologist who had a dog in a wire cage. The doctor would open the cage door, and as soon as the dog attempted escape, the doctor would electrify the cage. Soon, the doctor could open the door and the dog would actually back up and cower in the rear of the cage, deathly afraid that -- if he tried to get out -- he would be shocked.

THe same thing applies to upgrades.

I've seen people who bought VFP 6 that had a lot of problems with the help system. This was a personal issue with me. I tried it once and simply never used it again. This may be why a lot of shops stuck with VFP 5. When VFP 7 came along, the first thing that comes to our minds was, "will the help system work properly in our systems AS THEY ARE CONFIGURED?"

There's safety in sticking with something that works. If you do NOTHING, things may not get better, but it is unlikely they will worsen.

As it turns out, I stumbled upon a user group meeting that had a demo of VFP 7. I was quite impressed with the fact that, not only did the help system work well, but that there were features that made things a lot easier for the developer (namely me) such as keeping the commands in the command window so I could remember where I left off and the neat syntax reference while typing commands (whatever marketing wants to call it). Once the developer has an interest in the product, then the developer can persuade the corporate purchasing people that purchasing the upgrade will make the programmer more "efficient." It's the corporate game we have to play, playing with the minds of the corporate types and giving them enough programs to keep our direct deposits flowing into our bank accounts, and giving them carrots to get us new neat stuff on a semi-regular basis. The corporate types don't understand programming, so there is quite a bit of seriousness to the idea that it is the developer who convinces the business types to buy or not buy a new development tool.

Now, if only we could define custom data types in VFP like C or (gasp) VB in order that we might be able to make Windows API calls which require passing of pointers to structures ... you know, neat stuff.

Tell DewayneM, CindyLy, LeeMi, JohnYa, HaroldO, and any others from the old Fox unit whose email names (but not their faces) have slipped from my burned-out mind, that ArtGr says hello.

...A