>I am not the one that needs convincing, I am taking my own time to write a convincing argument in favor of going straight to 8, however what I am hearing is that there "Isn't much in 8 that you can't find in 7...".

Version 8 is the most significant release since fox went Visual (VFP3). Besides the web service/XML advances (MS's way of the future) the increased productivity alone should be justification. When I moved to version 7 I hated having to go back to V6 to do things - it was too slow to get things done. I now feel the same way about V7 vs V8. I can do more work in less time - that should be your bottom line !!!!