Craig;

What is a “third party tool” in this case? How about competition from other software companies? I tend to think of "third party tools" as "add ons".

Perhaps the perception is that Microsoft is always one step ahead but I tend to think of a few examples where this has not been true. DBase had some nice features I recall, Microsoft used the Watcom Complier for several years until they introduced their own, Borland C++ was more advanced than the Microsoft equivalent. FoxPro was more advanced than VB.

On products go back a bit further – Word Star and Word Perfect as products were more popular than Word for several years. Netscape was a more popular Browser for several years than I.E. The list goes on.

Another aspect of Microsoft products has been to buy a company that has a developed product – a bit like Vivitar – a marketing company with a name. Microsoft bought FoxPro and many others. Think back ends – Sybase and the Sybase/Microsoft connection, and then there is Oracle.

Microsoft attempts to lead users and developers in the direction of their “vision”. Some times as of late especially, that vision has not been clear. In the end I think if you took an item by item investigation of Microsoft by product and compared them to other competing products you would see that historically, Microsoft is and has not always been a leader.

Tom





>I haven't heard much about Delphi 8 so I can't comment on its features. However, it seems to me that Microsoft products will always be a step ahead on features when compared to third-party tools.
>
>
>>Hi all!
>>
>>I've one question:
>>What would be better - to focus on Microsoft's .NET or on Borland's Delphi 8 for future projects?
>>
>>Both base on the CLR and compile the code into IL but Delphi 8 should integrate a cool feature which would allow the developer to create one form (eg WinForm) and with one property / switch transform it to a WebForm.
>>(Please correct me if I'm wrong)
>>Therefore our company thinks of focussing to Borland's product.
>>
>>Because we don't have much info about Delphi 8 till now, I'd like to ask around a bit.
>>
>>Any hints appreciated, thanks in advance.