>The company that I work for buys software for me to use in my home office. I have a new computer and have decided to buy my own software so that I own it and control it. Before I buy $1000 worth of Microsoft software I wanted your opinion.
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>The company that I work for owns and uses Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 Professional. When MS VFP 6.0 was released, they bought me Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 to use in my home office. I want to buy my own Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 Professional so that I am fully compatible with the company that I work for.
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>I can buy the software for $550 - $1000. Am I making a $500 mistake buying this older software or should I be looking at the newer .NET versions or what? Confused. I don't see the company that I work for spending the money to upgrade from version 6.0 to 7.0 at this time. What do you think I should do? Thanks for the advice.

Steve, Microsoft developer licenses are per developer, not per computer, so you can legally install VFP6 on as many machines as you personally use, whether in your home or their offices.

Do they use other Visual Studio 6 tools in their work? If so and you bought the rest of VS6 you might increase your marketability to that particular company if you had time to learn the other tools.

As far as VS.NET is concerned, if they don't use it then the purpose for your having it is for you to learn it in your spare time. If you don't have the time then you're spending money on something that will be out-of-date before you ever use it, but if you have the time you'll be doing yourself a favor to broaden your skills.