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What's the environment? How is connectivity?
Are the customers in an intranet? Why is serial required, communication with hardware?
If the customers are on the intranet, then you could go for an ASP.NET application, as all the customer would need would be a web browser compatible with his old junkie and performance would be less of an issue. Configuration would also be a minor issue as all configuration would be centralized on the server and could be retrieved on a per-user base.
If you can force the use of a XP OS as a minumum, then I'd recommend developing on Windows Forms. It's desktop nature makes it possible to do pretty much everything you can on VB6 and more. It's also very friendly to develop once you get used to it. The learning curve is not very high. And it also makes it easy to localize (multi language with unicode) as it has built-in support for it at design time.
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson
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We were in the same boat 10 years ago, but it was a good time to re-evaluate and re-design from the ground up. We chose VB.net for our industrial control for our back end (control logic, serial/ip communications, data recording) and front end (user interface) and never looked back. Because sometimes you have to break from the past to move forward.
One thing to keep in mind; if your system works involves USDA looking over your records at all, all data must be non-modifiable, which is the opposite of a database. Get caught once changing the data could mean fines, prosecution or even jail time. You don't screw with government records!
BTW, you don't work for techi-systems do you? your setup sounds familiar.
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From: pirih.odvetnik@siol.net
Subject: Send Details To Claim seven hundred and fifty thousand great british pounds in British Premier Oil Promo. Send:
Name..
Address..
Tel..
and that's all (s)he wrote
i mean really??
"mostly watching the human race is like watching dogs watch tv ... they see the pictures move but the meaning escapes them"
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It's the recession.
Email ink is expensive and the electrons have gone up in price you know.......... 
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DaveAuld wrote: electrons have gone up in price
Fortunately, I bought a large supply before the increase - if you start to run out let me know and I will sell you some at cost plus 5%.
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together.
Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."
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No the laziest are the;
Read attached file and get back to me ASAP.
Sects Therapy
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Just to be clear that email is a total scam.
I sent them the required information and only got about half the amount promised.
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dasterdly!!
"mostly watching the human race is like watching dogs watch tv ... they see the pictures move but the meaning escapes them"
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It surprised me to read that somebody was attempting to write a balanced article on ZDNet comparing Microsoft's approach to UI development with Apple). Given that ZDNet is often just a sounding board for each others particular bias, it was interesting to see how "balance" would be achieved. Sadly, it looks like a particular preference took to the fore, but it was a brave attempt[^].
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Balance should never be achieved at the cost of facts. For example, I never hear any reference to how Mac software development used to be a huge pain as Apple changed OSs and how one version wasn't compatible with another or how they had to use the kernel of a competing OS, finally, because they couldn't develop their own OS properly. Keep in mind I have their products, but I'm not going to make excuses for them. And yes I don't think you're on one fence or another with you're post. Microsoft has their issues too, believe me. I just don't think balance matters. I don't need 5 facts on each side. There doesn't need to be a fact score board.
Well, who doesn't release stuff like that ? Microsoft software is just as bad.
Christian Graus
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
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wolfbinary wrote: I don't need 5 facts on each side. There doesn't need to be a fact score board.
Wouldn't a score board require 20 facts?
Henry Minute
Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain
Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?"
“I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus!
When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.
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I don't think I mentioned that balance should be achieved at the cost of facts. In fact, the only way you can really achieve balance here is by sticking purely to the facts. That was the whole point of my post there - the review attempts to deal with the relative approaches by both companies to the same problem, unfortunately the authors personal bias starts to shine through a bit.
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wolfbinary wrote: ... or how they had to use the kernel of a competing OS, finally, because they couldn't develop their own OS properly.
I guess you could say that. When Steve Jobs left Apple he started NextStep and they based their OS on Mach which was a micro-kernel variant of BSD from CMU. Eventually they bought NextStep (in 1997) to facilitate development of their new OS, also based on Mach, and it is still the basis of their OS today. Back then nearly every company making computers based their OS on one variant of unix or another. Of course, there were exceptions (no pun intended). The purchase of NextStep also brought the return of Steve Jobs back to Apple.
You can read about Mach here[^]. Also check out the link there to NextStep as it was actually a rather pioneering OS with several of its innovations in common use today.
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Did this newsletter article really resonate with anyone else? It's slashdotted (codeprojected maybe?) so here's the GCache link: http://bit.ly/qNbGv6[^].
I know it's in the nature of a programmer to be working in a dynamic field, moreso than many others; but ****, is it frustrating when you want to build someone a relatively simple website with some standard features and a few new "things", and you have to spend however many hours evaluating not just languages but platforms and frameworks and communities and future plans and everything else. It's not just Ruby/Rails, the poster child for programmers with ADHD; it's also PHP, easy to deploy on most hosts but with 168 frameworks you need to spend several hours each to evaluate, only to figure out that someone with delusions of grandeur wrote the routing engine.
Honestly, I want to code, become really familiar with one stack, so that I can focus on really great solutions with it. If I want to check out some new paradigms, then I can without having to do so just to find work. Yeah, maybe not the "ideal programmer", but having been doing this only 6 years... it's frustrating to me.
modified on Tuesday, September 6, 2011 11:34 AM
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Please use the return key. That one paragraph was a tricky one to read because it was just one solid block of text and it became difficult for me to concentrate on the text itself.
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Sorry, my rambling got the best of me. Fixed.
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Thank you. I can read it now.
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The Return key isn't available in his chosen language.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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He is at the point of no return.
------------------------------------
I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave
CCC Link[ ^]
Trolls[ ^]
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Frustration had driven me to the precipice, but since then I have Returned.
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Dalek Dave wrote: He is at the point of no return.
Gawd, that was corny. But I like it anyway. 
XAlan Burkhart
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Return is for the weak. One should never look back.
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson
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I've been doing this for over 30 years. Imagine how I must feel...
You can't possibly become intimately familiar with every nuance of every language and/or framework. The best you can hope for is to become extremely good at what's currently putting beans on the table, and if the need arises, go with the flow and learn whatever else you need to learn as you need to learn it. It's called "adaptation". The nature of computer work is change. Embrace it, or die.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: Embrace it, or die
You know, when you say that, I can't help imagining a gravelly voice and crosshairs.
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I think "gravelly voice and knife at your neck" is a more appropriate visage.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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