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To: K. M. Strickler who wrote (17153)	2/6/1998 6:09:00 AM
From: Charles Hughes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

>>Now the documentation is released on the CD, and I trust the documentation is 'current'!<<< You then are forced to sit at the computer, instead of taking one of the manuals and a notepad to the coffee house, or just a different chair. More Carpal Tunnel there. So what I do is but more books at Stacey's for 50 bucks a pop, then take the rather expensive laptop to the coffee house. 20 pounds of total stuff to lug around, and it certainly costs more than the formerly included 'free' manuals, although of course it is also more effective, but that's because I bought the laptop, not because I paid for the book separately. >>>and I hope this savings is somehow passed on to us! Yes, it is. But that means the true cost is higher by the amount of the books you have to buy separately. So I say the true cost of the tool I need, paying list for support, books, and software, is probably around a thousand bucks for the premium, all features edition. An all time record in absolute terms. And that is just the first installment. It's only good for a year, and you also pay for the developer program right away. So maybe you pay $1500 the first year and 700 a year thereafter. On top of that, five years ago, the compiler would let you write programs for dos, Windows, win32, OS/2, and Xenix, if you bought the right package. Now 5.0 addresses Windows period, with some five year old compiler for Win 3.1 in a subdirectory if you want something for that (but it's not portable.) Borland has a better deal, but it's hard to get a customer that will let you use anything but Microsoft now. They are too afraid of their power to use anybody else's tools. Talk about inflation adjusted. In inflation-adjusted terms a contractor could get more money in 1983 programming in turbo pascal with that $19 original Borland compiler than with VC++ 5.0. The pascal compiler that made us say "IDE? What's an IDE?" (It had the first true IDE I had ever seen.) Now that was innovation. And a good price. Not only has software tool cost gone up, but if you want to talk inflation-adjustment, programmers salaries and especially contractors rates for a given experience level are down since the 60's. But not our costs. Cheers, Chaz