Re: Future of Delphi 7.x - need official word from Borland

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Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 08:22:36 -0600

Hi Kirk,

"Kirk Halgren" <khalgren@sti.nasa.gov> wrote in message
news:41f79e4e$1@newsgroups.borland.com...
> For one thing, there are a few more costs involved with manufacturing a
> vehicle than a program. Asking for D7 is more like wanting to buy last
> year's shop manual.

Agreed. I think on the issue of whether or not you should be able to buy a
copy of D7, there should be no reason why they can't provide that.
Certainly, they should be able to distribute even older versions
electronically even if they don't have the physical packages. I'm sure they
don't want to manufacture and stock a bunch of inventory of older versions,
but they sure could sell you a copy that you could download. Probably be a
huge download, but at least it would be available.

> You wouldn't like it much if they couldn't sell you parts to fix your 2003
> model, saying you should buy a 2005 version.

Agreed also. However, with the auto parts, the decision becomes "do we sell
enough parts to justify maintaining the tooling and making parts and keeping
them in inventory", but with Delphi, it's more like "we have to keep
investing in a product (version) that we don't make _any_ money with
anymore, and give the updates to existing customers for free". There comes
a point where it just doesn't make good business sense to continue doing
that. And being an engineer, I have no idea how to go about determining
just where that point is. In the case of MS and updating older operating
systems, if they have somewhere in the neighborhood of tens to hundreds of
millions of customers still using W98, then it would seem that they could
devote the resources to maintaining that for a period of time, but if you're
talking about maybe 100,000 users of a product, I'd think you'd be inclined
to devote less resources for a shorter time. I don't have any idea what the
real numbers of users are for Windows or Delphi, just thinking in terms of
orders of magnitude.

> If Microsoft made cars, they'd cost about $3.50, get hundreds of miles per
> gallon, but if your motor stalled halfway through a journey of 1000 miles,
> you'd find yourself back in your driveway.

Yeah! I guess the Apollo 13 astronauts could have benefited from that. :^)

> "I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my
> telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my
> telephone."

LOL! There are times when I wish I could just pick up the phone and say
"Sarah, get me Andy".

Cheers,
Van

• Previous message: Kevin Berry: "Re: Future of Delphi 7.x - need official word from Borland"
• In reply to: Kirk Halgren: "Re: Future of Delphi 7.x - need official word from Borland"
• Next in thread: Ingvar Nilsen: "Re: Future of Delphi 7.x - need official word from Borland"
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• Reply: Kirk Halgren: "Re: Future of Delphi 7.x - need official word from Borland"
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