Hi Josef,

Do you think, for a moment, that the QA testers for XP *didn't* test each key type separately, with separate builds, on separate hardware???? I'd be *extremely* shocked if they didn't -- and, as I re-read Mike Stewart's comment, they tested for things even he hadn't considered.

I can also *guarantee* you that the XP team didn't develop just one version and leave the "additional efforts on the sales department side" to handle the activation key issue. Do you seriously think that there's no code in XP that's bracketed for "if the activation key is full, do this -- if it's demo, do that"? ALL that code must be tested --independently--, and there's NO WAY any MS dev team, ESPECIALLY the XP team, would leave this to their sales crowd.

Obviously, the XP team considered this extra effort, both on the development AND the testing side, to be important enough to undertake. But Josef, you're comparing apples and oranges here. XP is an *OPERATING SYSTEM* -- and Microsoft currently holds an 85% market share in that area. VFP is a *development tool*, aimed at a *COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MARKET* than an OS. How many developers and QA testers are on the XP team? I'd wager a guess that number would be in the hundreds, or close to that. How many people (not just developers, but bodies) are on the entire VFP team, *including* management? About fifteen. How many of those fifteen do you REALLY want to "pull off" their work in making VFP the *outstanding* product that it is, for the purposes that you suggest?

Additionally, how could you POSSIBLY get the idea that I was suggesting that professional developers were not involved in creating XP? There's NOTHING in any of my statements that slightly hints, let alone suggests, that I would believe this to be true.

Maybe it's just my Monday blues acting up, but this whole discussion has started to diverge into an addition to my personal "dead horse" category.

>Hi Evan !
>And what about activation key technology. In this case customer get fully functional product in evaluation version and through entering activation key gets full product. In this technology there is only one version of product (maybe a little bit more complicated only). This technolgy was used by Microsoft in Windows XP. In such case team develops only one version - additional efforts are on sales department side. Did you suggest that in creating WinXP was not involved professional software developers ?
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>>However, I do not believe that in professional software development, you can produce a demo version of a product where "separate testing of demo version will not be needed or needed only in very limited scope". IMHO, quite the opposite condition exists.
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