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The most important part is to try out the features totally  before purchase.
I agree that features are needed... but at least before purchase one should have a try link (If not it is already popular among developers). 
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vide subject
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep!
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Yes. I agree. I would then chosen Trial version + Features.. then.... 
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I agree...
Best regards,
rferj
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So that we all say "Yeah, all of that"?
A chance to pick, say. the most important 3 of N would be nice.
Personally, I love the idea that Raymond spends his nights posting bad regexs to mailing lists under the pseudonym of Jane Smith. He'd be like a super hero, only more nerdy and less useful. [Trevel]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist
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The company I'm working with says, is it from Microsoft? (because they are Partners)
if not sometimes it's very difficult to buy the tool 
luisnike19
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Does that apply even when the tool is free?
I know that MS have said one reason why they seem to reinvent the wheel with their own versions of open source tools is that they have many customers who won't touch anything that's not from Microsoft.
Kevin
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One of the reasons I tend not to use third-party controls is that I figure if the control is worthwhile Microsoft will have it in their next version.
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I've not used third-party controls myself (but I'm often asked at interview whether I've used them - I say no and then never get the job  ).
What about third party tools of any sort?
Kevin
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I do NOT use open source tools of any kind on production environments, simply because many of them appears today and disappears tomorrow. Who can help us if something goes wrong with that tool? Ok, I know we can touch the code or find a new one but how do you tell your boss that you will stop to work on your project to solve a problem with an open source tool?
I have been using thid-party tools for some time now and I can say that if you pay for a tool you can and should wait for the problem to be solved by the people who really knows that tool.
Best regards,
rferj
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Rferj wrote: I do NOT use open source tools of any kind on production environments, simply because many of them appears today and disappears tomorrow.
The same can apply to third party software vendors, so does this mean we should only use products from big multinational companies who are less likely to go bust? What do you do when they have long-standing bugs that don't get fixed? This does happen and they can go unfixed literally for years.
I think as with anything one just needs to apply some discrimination to these things. What is the nature of the software we're using? Could an alternative implementation be easily substitutable?
For example, I've used the PowerCollections library in commercial projects. This is just a library of data structures and algorithms. If I encounter a serious bug that no-one can easily fix then at the end of the day I can just unroll that algorithm or data structure. There is no huge risk.
If I use some open source or even commercial UI controls then things are tougher should they go out of business. I would have a lot more work to do. That's a judgement you have to make, whether with open source or commercial.
You also need to check how widely used the tool is, how active the forums are, etc.
Kevin
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Or would that qualify as "compatibility... with other users"?
The only "development products" I use are Visual Studio and SQL Server -- and the main reason is "because everyone else is using them".
(It helps that I got both for free, the documentation is extensive, and there's at least one good online community for them.)
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A lot of these are important, but I won't buy anything anymore without trying it in my own environment first. I've been burned by salespeople overselling the product on more than one occasion. You can exaggerate the feature list, you can oversimplify the documentation, you can give it a crazy low price, but you can't fake a trial.
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Ed Leighton-Dick wrote: you can't fake a trial
Tell that to O.J. 
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Agree ... No trial and no buy.
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... thanks for the feedback.
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Does this mean
1) We can vote again, since we've a new option?
2) Too late - ha ha (so now poll is even more skewed?)
3) "Documentation?" - we don't need no stinkin' documentation!
And, whilst we're adding new (but inaccessible?) choices, let's add the choice that everyone wanted - but were afraid to mention: the package with the hottest cyber-chicks wearing equally hot kilts, gracing the sales brochures.
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
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I selected other, because my primary criterion was not on the list, and I'm appalled that it is *not* on the list. It *should* be the first thing on the list.
Documentation
David Wright
Senior Developer
IC Group, Inc.
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What's that?
Personally, I love the idea that Raymond spends his nights posting bad regexs to mailing lists under the pseudonym of Jane Smith. He'd be like a super hero, only more nerdy and less useful. [Trevel]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist
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I know that everybody would like to believe that documentation is unnecessary, but every profession has its albatross. I'm sure vintners don't get much of a charge out of corking wine bottles, either, but its got to be done if the thing is going to be a finished product. If it's for your own use, you can drink from the vat if it suits you, but if its for somebody else, cork the bottle.
If I am going to spend a half-hour searching for a library, then to make it worth my while it had better take me about 10 minutes to implement it out of the box and it had better work right. Then it can save me time and money and I'm happy to pay somebody for the effort they put into it. If I spend the half-hour looking and then have to spend a day grovelling though source to figure out how to use it or a week finding and reporting bugs so the author can make it work right, then it is a waste of my time, and I won't take it for free. I can write it myself faster.
David Wright
Senior Developer
IC Group, Inc.
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Sometimes, you simply cannot take the time to thoroughly investigate and drill every aspect of a new whatsit.
Having a contributing community backing a product says a lot for it as well as giving me more of a security blanket for finding quick answers to the unforeseen gotchas.
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
-irresponsibility@Despair.com
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I agree. One of the first things I do when looking at some new software product, whether commercial, free or open source, is see how active the forums are - and also whether most reported problems have solutions.
If a product receives timely updates this is another sign of confidence. But I would place the above higher.
Kevin
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It must be a quirk of my brain that I can pick up the usage of a component from an example within microseconds, but find it so incredibly hard to wade through verbose bloated textual explanations.
Since I normally need a component for something a little out of the ordinary I need to see the extremes of what it can do as well... if I didn't I'd code it myself.
Many components do not come with real world examples and only demonstrate at the "this is how to create a folder" level.
So, give me a decent manual with a few tricky examples to learn from (and let me see what the component is capable of doing in the hands of the expert who wrote it)
Dave
Software Developer
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Is it comparable with my brain function - or not.
Price helps in a perverse way: I've MSDN from employer in a Windows shop with several hundred XP workstations. MSDN upgrades - like the latest Visual Studio are thus top-sellers for the likes of me. And then, of course, there's the SourceForge.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"It's a sad state of affairs, indeed, when you start reading my tag lines for some sort of enlightenment. Sadder still, if that's where you need to find it." - Balboos HaGadol
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