In a follow-up to Perry’s post (again) I wonder: why should one buy Delphi 2005 instead of Visual Studio for .NET? A manager sees:
Delphi 2005 Architect edition: $3000 (new user). Support is an optional product. Cheapest level includes only 3 incidents for 12 months (whatever comes first).
MSDN Universal: $2800 (new user) and that gives the user VS.NET Enterprise Architect, ALL Office applications (including previous versions for testing), LTU (albeit for development only) for all Windows OS-es, including pre-releases only available to subscribers, online support with a garantueed response of 2 days, 4 phone incidents)
If you or your company has a history with Delphi and you want to keep your existing codebase, I can see why Delphi 2005 is a logical step. If you’re choosing tools for a new project, I cannot see why one would not choose MSDN Universal.