PureBasic Forums - English

Good old Micro$oft! If you want to get Visual Basic 5 or 6 from them now,
then guess what: you must first buy Visual Basic .NET, and then they'll allow
you the honour of "downgrading" to 5 or 6! See for yourself:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/previo ... grade.aspx

No wonder Bill Gates is the world's richest man. :roll: My response:

http://www.netdisaster.com/go.php?mode= ... rosoft.com

May be not all which MS do is perfectly done.
Only who do things is probable to do bugs and errors. And the more things made the more probable to commit mistakes.
Those who do nothing, never commits mistakes.

My opinion is simple:
MS is the best and it is hated because envy.

> MS is the best and it is hated because envy

I'm not envious of Micro$oft at all. I don't like their policies. You don't force
someone to buy the latest version of something just so they can get the old
version. Would you like to buy Windows XP just so you can use Windows 98?
That's what they're doing with Visual Basic, so who knows how far they'll go
with this new "policy" for other products...

Agree in that what you say about some policies.

MS say:

If you require a previous version of Visual Basic, you may purchase Visual Basic .NET and then downgrade to a prior version.

and i agree with you that it is inadmisible.
As i said above; not all is welldone in MS.

Edited. It is my bad english.

I misunderstood you, sorry. I didn't quite understand what you were saying.

Part of the reason for this is that Sun sued them because vs6 included the microsoft java virtual machine, and they can no longer ditribute that. Maybe they worked something out with Sun that required .NET?

It's probably because VB5 or VB6 aren't sold by MS anymore. Then you have to pay for VB, and you can access the lower version if you don't want to use it.

It makes sense if you think about it. What you're buying is not really a product but a license. If you want to use Visual Basic, whatever version, you have to buy a Visual Basic license.

Fred wrote:
> pay for VB, and you can access the lower version if you don't want to use it

Access, or buy? It's not clear what the "downgrade" is... do you automatically
get Visual Basic 5 and 6 for free if you pay for the .NET version? I doubt it.
They would have specifically stated that if it were true.

netmaestro wrote:
> What you're buying is not really a product but a license. If you want to use
> Visual Basic, whatever version, you have to buy a Visual Basic license.

And that's my point: Visual Basic .NET is far more expensive than 5 or 6 were,
so they're making you pay the earth just to (possibly pay) for the old versions.

netmaestro also wrote:
> If someone came to this forum and complained that Fred was making him pay for
> a PB license when what he wanted to use was PB 2.0, whose side would you take?

That's silly, and here's why: I bought PureBasic v2.40 when it was about $49 (IIRC).
So if I wanted to access v2.40 now, you're saying that I would have to pay $69 (the
current price for PureBasic) just to get a license for it? In other words, I'm paying
today's higher price, for a better product which I don't want, just because I want
the old legacy version? And you really don't see anything wrong with that?

This is interesting.

Not sure if this is valid, but it seems that MS allow discounted UPgrades and DOWNgrades if you buy into particular sw product family.

In other words, buy a version, buy any other version cheaper. Or perhaps buy a version, then you can buy next UP version and any DOWN version cheaper.

So they see each version as a different product and if you have one in the family, you get discounts on the others.

Does that sound right?

As to the 49 -> 69 example, would that be a CPI thing? Simple inflation, just as with cars and washing machines.


BTW, before buying PureBasic, I bought VB.net (1.01, IIRC). I paid Aussie $50 for it, from a Microsoft authorised dealer who was recommended to me by Microsoft. Reckon I could get a discounted VB6 based on that purchase? Although I am not sure what I would do with VB6.

> As to the 49 -> 69 example, would that be a CPI thing?

No, the price changed on the PureBasic web site -- it's nothing to do with
current exchange rates or anything. As for discount pricing for VB, I don't
know what the story is there.

> I bought VB.net (1.01, IIRC). I paid Aussie $50 for it

Only $50? WTF? I paid Aussie $900 for VB5! Why is .NET so cheap?

I know a guy who upgraded his pirated Visual Studio for thirty bucks!

@netmaestro: I guess it all depends on who you deal with at MS then. I still
don't agree with the whole "buy new to get the old" philosophy though.

It's a shame that Fred isn't the CEO of M$ I'm pretty sure that things would be changed for the better then!

Fred for CEO, Fred president.

PB wrote:Only $50? WTF? I paid Aussie $900 for VB5! Why is .NET so cheap?

It was early days. Early take on, perhaps. Initially it was only available to US (and IIRC, Canada) according to the website, but I checked up with MS here and got it for that price here.

Not sure what it costs now. Probably free. It came with a visual studio development environment. Also had really great docs, including enough fold-out structure diagrams to wallpaper my office. Or, literally, one wall.

It also caused heaps of probs as new NET releases came through (I was keeping up with Net in those days). Bloody aweful.

So, NET may well rock when all the dust is settled - it may even rock now - but back then it just sucked and I have gone right off it.