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I would say that reliability would be the main factor I would look for on a development tool. The product could have the most amazing feature set, but if it crashes at random intervals and looses all of your work then it is unusable.
As for security, would you want a web tool to send customers data unencrypted - or say, send it to your competitors?
Price is relevant, but not a show stopper if the product is clearly going to save more then it costs, after all, that is one of the reasons we use external products.
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We aren't allowed to buy new development products so it doesn't matter what information I get any more.
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I guess it really is that overlooked in today's dev world.
(Quality of Support is not the same as quality)
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Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote: Quality of Support is not the same as quality
Right.
Quality is buying a car that does not lose control on the highway.
Quality of Support is buying a car that does lose control. However, when it does, you can find phone number of a nearby hospital in the owner's manual.
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Xiangyang Liu 刘向阳 wrote: Quality of Support is buying a car that does lose control. However, when it does, you can find phone number of a nearby hospital in the owner's manual.
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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After all budgets have to be spent before the end of the year, else your budget will be cut!
Bonus points for purchasing a product that requires an expensive license renewal subscription to be paid every year.
Double points for purchasing a product that requires an expensive license server that also has a license that needs to be renewed every year.
King of the hill award to purchasing a product that is impossible to use, has sparse documentation, and requires everyone to go on a US$1000 per head per day training course for every new release of the product that comes out.
Sometimes Subversion just doesn't cut it budget wise.
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John Stewien wrote: Sometimes Subversion just doesn't cut it budget wise.
Hmm, You pay a licensing fee for a subversion server?
We have never paid any licensing fees for cvs or svn but we run these on linux servers.
And the clients are free as well. We use tortoise and rapidsvn for the clients.
John
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No Subversion is free which is why we can't use it. It doesn't use up the budget - so it doesn't cut the mustard budget wise.
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But I am working on a software application now that has ridiculous support fees and requires annual one-week user training in Hawaii. The hope is the end-users will swear by it and eagerly await the annual training. I am aiming for 52 customers. I don't really know what the product does but I can hardly see how that is relevant.
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I got caught recently asking for the latest version of Umlet. [non]tech-services said 'No - we only use paid for software...'
Panic, Chaos, Destruction.
My work here is done.
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I am supprised that there is such low percentage that chose price.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how good the futures are, how good the support, documentation, etc is. If it too expensive it won't get bought.
Unfortunatly the budget dictates what gets bought and what not.
Ego non sum semper iustus tamen Ego sum nunquam nefas!
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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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