Jim Hubbard said:
Your phone works, right? Call them. They are nice people, they'll work
with you.
I've never had to pay costs, even a phone call, to evaluate other
products - why should Thinstall be any different? Why do they have to
turn away people who just want to try it?
(I've just seen on their website that they have a UK office, so I take
back the previous comment about the phone call being international.
Whether the UK office would be able or willing to sort me out with an
eval copy, I don't know.)
BTW, why can't you use your work email?
a) It's the weekend. I have some free time today, I'd like to download
it today. I don't have access to my work email from home.
b) It's not strictly to do with work, which is what my work email is
meant to be for.
c) I really don't see why I should have to. There's a point of
principle here. If Jitit don't think that as a developer who is not
only a professional, but is interested in technology outside his work,
I'm worth even giving an evaluation copy to, I'm less than impressed. I
could quite understand them giving the evaluation with no support to
those who are just evaluating it from an interested perspective, but
flatly discouraging people like myself leaves a nasty taste in the
mouth.
Please wait for clarification of something I said when you don't understand
it. "Upgrading" your operating system doesn't changing to the next higher
OS. Upgrading an operating system can simply be the addition of code to
allow new functionality like adding the.Net framework (1 or all 3 of them).
Given that you talked about financial costs (separate to administrative
costs), and that it was a post in relation to Longhorn, I'm sure I'm
not the only one to interpret your post as talking about upgrading to a
new operating system.
This was always the case. I never said otherwise. I was not clear in one
of my posts to you concerning win95 and the .Net framework - however, I have
replied to that post in the correct portion of this thread.
Indeed.
Pointing out obvious flaws is not spreading FUD. It's called pointing out
obvious flaws to make a point.
And when you start a new thread on a .NET newsgroup *just* to point out
that there are problems in the framework (like that's not going to
happen with every framework available - I notice you omitted the fact
that kbalertz shows about as many problems for VB6, by the way), it
counts as FUD to me. Statements like:
<quote>
Looking at all of the errors and quirks sometimes makes me wonder if
this thing is really ready for prime time.
</quote>
without reference to the fact that there are the same kind of problems
in other environments doesn't make you look like you're trying to give
a balanced viewpoint. Instead, you're coming over as someone who is
griping about .NET really because of the way that the VB->VB.NET
migration has been handled, rather than because of problems inherent to
..NET. Now, that may well not be an accurate appraisal of how you
actually feel, but it's the way you're coming across to me.
People who start threads in newsgroups just to try to put people off
the topic of those newsgroups are rarely seen to come from an unbiased
viewpoint.
Imagine someone had made a post like yours in the VB newsgroup - how do
you think people would have reacted?
FUD (and terms like it) are typically used by language evangelicals to
attack anyone that points out flaws in their chosen langiage or platform.
Let's try and not get into a jihad over it, OK?
I'm not the one who's been evangelising on this thread - and I'm quite
happy to accept flaws in the framework and languages. Indeed, I've been
very ready to point them out.
Since I am recommending Thinstall, people want to know why. The 1,596 (and
growing) errors in the .Net frameworks are a big reason why I use and
recomend Thinstall.
Out of interest, how many of those errors do you think affect more than
a handful of people? (Not that they're all errors, of course - some are
just announcing the availability of other hotfixes which are already
listed.)
I accept it's a reasonable reason to use Thinstall in certain
situations. I don't accept it as a reasonable reason not to use .NET in
the first place.
.Net is certainly not the only product to have a list of problems and fixes.
And, Thinstall is not a .Net only application. It works just as well with
C++, Delphi and a list of other languages - all of which have their own good
and bad points.
Sure.
As this is the microsoft.public.dotnet.general newsgroup, I felt it
necessary to restrict my comments to the languages and potential helpful
applications (like Thinstall) pertinent to this newsgroup. Hope that 's OK
with you.
When you say that developing in .NET is basically a bad idea, you
should provide the comparitive context, however.
Not sure what your question means here.
Most of them. We support a limited set of OSs just for that reason. For
instance, my company does not write applications for specific use on NT,
2000 or Win98. We do test Thinstall wrapped apps on those OSs if we haven't
used OS-specific calls that would invalidate our software on them. If those
tests work out - we mark our app as tested for use with those OSs.
You've really read most of the KB articles available about Windows? I'm
impressed - I've always got the impression that there are far too many
to keep up with. Most of
JIT doesn't normally get involved with people that aren't serious about
purchasing the application. I can't say that I blame them.
There are plenty of people who can influence purchasing decisions
without being direct purchasers, however. If I were able to evaluate
Thinstall, I would have a better idea of its technical abilities and
could potentially recommend it to other people. If the need ever *did*
arise where Thinstall could be useful, I'd have a much better
impression of the company than I do now, so would be more likely to
look closely at it.
It was a jibe!