We frequently get enquires about the availability of older versions of DataEase as well as the status of bug fixing/support for these products.

Above you see a table of the status of Products as of today.

All products except DFD pre. 453 and DataEase for Windows 6.x-652 is available as ADDUSERS (new users to existing installations, but not available for new customers/installations).

We can quite proudly announce that you can run ANY application ever made in DataEase in one of the versions currently available for general sale today!* 

There has been quite a lot of request related to the announced withdrawal of LegEasy 6 Windows and the following de-supportation of the same product.

So we think it is time to explain a little further what the many different interpretations of the word Support means related to DataEase:

1. Product Support.

Product support is only offered for the latest version of any product line, hence the question: What version of DataEase are you in? And the answer, when they say something onther than the latest version…. ?Please download the latest version and see if that fix your problem.?

The reason for this is that publishing new versions of a product line is part of the product support, and as we fix things constantly the reason for the problem is most likely already been fixed in the latest version.

If it hasn?t been fixed in the latest version, the fix will be in an even later version so there is no ?possibility? that the fix could be in the version they are using anyway.

2. Application Support.

We don?t offer application support, but we do offer help on the forum etc. on specific problems, methods and techniques related to applications and usage of DataEase.

As we don?t offer this formally for any product there is no real ?legal? limit to what we will ?support? when the question is put to us on the forum.

If the user ask us a question in 7.x and it is relevant to 8.5 or if we know a response that will quickly help the customer we would not hesitate to publish the solution.

Same goes for DFD and earlier versions of DFW, but needless to say we would be more interested in offering solution to problems and challenges in 8.5 than in earlier products of DataEase.

3. Formal de-supporting of a product.

Obviously like everything else in the computer industry a word like support couldn?t have only one simple meaning… When a Product is de-supported that doesn?t mean that you can?t get user support on it (obviously an customer could buy user support on any product as long as they like).

It means that the company no longer will fix problems with it.

Today most publishers update their product constantly, so de-supporting simply means that they stop all updates/fixes/changes to a product. It can still be used and sometimes even bought, but you the publisher will no longer fix it if broken.

When MS stopped supporting XP in March last year it simply meant that they would no longer offer fixes to important functional and security related bugs so if a big security flaw as found in XP that would expose all your data to abuse from a third party that would not be fixed WHATEVER, while it would be immediately fixed in Vista, Windows 7 and onwards.

*When LegEasy 4 DOS is released end of March