Yeah, a great time was had by all!

One major point John made, with which I agree wholeheartedly is that this release has significant language enhancements, not merely IDE/UI improvements e.g.

- EMPTY and COLLECTION classes, plus TRY...CATCH local/structured error handling (as opposed to global ON ERROR commonly used now). To me it looks like these can significantly improve the architecture of VFP apps. I imagine all the framework vendors are hard at work...

- The fact that Table Autoincrement integer columns work with a value stored in the table header, not the .DBC, so it works with free tables as well!

- It sure looks like a lot of work has been done with XMLAdapter and CursorAdapter to help abstract/encapsulate data access. Using disparate data sources becomes a matter of setting properties rather than complex code.

- Improved image support via GDI+ (an animated GIF of moon phases handled natively was shown)

- Pageframe tabs on any side (not just the top), multi-line tooltips, etc.

- VFP8 is more than merely compatible with the Tablet PC, the Fox Team feels it's an outstanding development choice for that platform

- Notwithstanding a couple of VFP8 bugs that appeared during the demo (it wouldn't be complete without some :) and these guys were beta testing the presentation on our group), the MS guys are pleased with its stability. They showed a video of the 62 test PCs running regression tests. One of the testers was working there so long he'd lost significant weight < g > Or maybe it was a side effect of not wearing lead underwear in a room with that many computers.

I have only one teeny complaint. My genuine MS Optical Wheelmouse does not work properly with the genuine MS VFP8 mouse pad. The mouse gets confused and the cursor bounces all over the place. Oh well, back to the trusty Egghead pad... at least I can use the VFP8 pad with my old PC and MS 2.0 ball mouse.