> However, it seems to me that Microsoft products will always be a step
> ahead on features when compared to third-party tools.

He, I think you got it the wrong way round. MS products tend to trail the market for years before they catch up with the competition, even if they outsell the competition much earlier (MS is very good at owning markets via its marketing/legal departments - I mean how can spend hundreds of millions on marketing a single product?). Sometimes they even manage to put the competition out of the market without ever getting their product to a comparable level ...

As regards Delphi vs. VS.NET: Borland has been doing Delphi for a very long time, they started long before MS bought Anders Hejlsberg from them to re-invent it in the shape of .NET. Also, Borland has quite a bit of incentive to deliver because they want to get a share of the market, while MS already 'has' it and will make a lot of sales simply based on inertia as usual. That's why I trust Borland to teach MS a lesson or two about creating RAD environments for .NET. Just compare building apps in VC++ to doing the same in Borland's C++Builder ...

I am not very fond of the Delphi language but if I have to do an exe/dll that cannot be done in Fox and that doesn't contain enough crunchy portions to warrant using C++ then I use Delphi for it.

Unfortunately I haven't had the time yet to try out Builder X and Delphi 8, so I cannot report actual experience with the products.