From Joylon’s suggestion, I changed the label from "months"
to read "Months between releases".

I updated the article with some thoughts on the time between releases. I fugure my speculation is as good as anyone else’s.

For the record, I have owned every version of Delphi and used each of them in production, including the "dreaded" versions 4 and 8. The only one I found to be unusable was the unpatched Delphi 4 (the patched version works just fine).

From Joylon’s suggestion, I changed the label from "months"
to read "Months between releases".

I updated the article with some thoughts on the time between releases.

For the record, I have owned every version of Delphi and used each of them in production, including the "dreaded" versions 4 and 8. The only one I found to be unusable was the unpatched Delphi 4 (the patched version works just fine).

I’m really hoping that BDS2008 is usable, and that the promised new features actually arrive for BDS2009, but after seeing 64 bit left as vapourware I’m not holding my breath. I suspect that by 2009 we will be down to one or two Delphi developers with the rest using VS. But we will have more than paid for those two copies of BDS2009 by keeping one edition of SA current for the intervening years. Then we’ll have to buy an extra license.

In fact for Pro, SA ONLY makes sense if you do this. Plug 24 months into that months field (i.e. representing only every other update being of usefulness) and watch Pro ROI hit "None" across the board.

The problem being that you cannot know if an update you will get at some point in the future with SA will be of use unless you pay for it months in advance.

An Enterprise user that only ever takes (makes use of) alternate upgrades still comes out better off with SA in the long run (> 5 years though). An Architect user "wins" after just 4 years of using only alternate upgrades.

For a Pro user this is not the case.

Even just one release of no utility to a Pro SA user will make it very difficult for SA to ever "pay for itself".

It’s good to have the numbers in front of you, but a _Pro_ user still also needs a reliable crystal ball in order to make sure they are using the right numbers. Using what turn out to be the wrong numbers would cost you dearly.

Nice work Bruce, and qudos for Nick for bringing this tool to peoples attention.

In the NG discussion we had on this subject he pointed out that the average release gap for Delphi has historically been 14.5 months (history being a more reliable indicator than any future, non-committing promises).

Plug 14 months into the calculator and Pro SA doesn’t save money for 4 years!

We are still waiting for the two key features that would cause us to buy a new version - 64 bit and unicode. We actually have one copy of SA just so we can try the new versions, but we have not even been able to build our major project in anything between D7 and D2006.