>Bruce,
>
>Here's one thing that KenL has said about your MSDN sales issue: Re: The Decline of VFP Thread #684303 Message #689857

Aha, almost like data :-) There's one other element here that's missing, too, besides the fact that the info there does not appear to have any statistical backing whatsoever...(and no offense meant to Ken, he may know a lot more but not be at liberty to reveal it).

At least in my neck of the woods: I have purchased 6 copies of vfp8 for testing and some single-user apps in my local office thus far, and there are others floating around nearby as well, but mainly are still in the testing stage. However, our larger and more wide-spread vfp7 apps are still being used by a number of NT4 users at the agency, and we see no point in more vfp8 purchases just yet (well, we can't cost-justify it, is what I really mean), because we see no point in deploying vfp8 apps to NT4 users. We'll just have to re-deploy later (always a pain, even with SMS), and some of the the vfp8 features are not available to NT4 users (besides which, I'm not 100% certain vfp8 will not invite some problem or another under NT4 OS, though it appears to work okay. But I *know* vfp8 works fine on XP, is the point, and there's no redeployment.)

In any event, we're holding off on more vfp8s until these darn slow offices get their tails upgraded to XP (they have some problems with some older apps on XP, so I can't do anything but sigh, tap my fingers, and learn to use the features of vfp8 better in the meantime). I'm one of those that actually wishes MS would drop support for NT4 entirely (we still have it here, and will for some time, from what I hear, despite seeing support deadlines come and go).

Add to this the fact we had to wait for (no matter what was said originally) the inevitable vfp8 SP before deploying *anything* except a couple test apps, or face a lot of redeployment - another reason for some to wait on purchases.

In summary, eventually we'll get more vfp8s, but not until everyone is on XP (at least the SP is out of the way now). But do MS and some of the "cutting-edge" types realize what the real world can be like, with all these older apps/OS still running around, and budget restrictions? (and I'm talking some mainframe stuff that barely runs on NT4, not just DOS or early Windows). I currently have the only office anywhere around that is relatively up to date with all-XP & Win2K Servers, and some smaller vfp8 apps running.

And on top of all this: All anyone at IT brass seems concerned about these days is security, security, security. No more upgrading pushes unless it's a major security issue, those days are gone.

Sorry, don't mean to whine about my personal frustrations - I'm just saying that not all the purchases of vfp8 are in yet.