CVS vs. Perforce

[Charles Soper]

Hello, 
I was hoping to get some opinions from people on this list. Currently, I'm 
looking into getting a new version control system. I have 23 users on 
Windows and Macintosh and a few users are on Linux. Microsoft Visual 
SourceSafe 5.0 has almost become unusable for us. It becomes corrupted 
almost once every week or two! Because we need a Macintosh CodeWarrior IDE 
plug-in I think that CVS and Perforce are really the only ones for me to 
look at. The Windows clients need a Visual C++ 6.0 plug-in. It would be 
great to have stand-along GUIs on both. 

Right now I'm leaning a little bit towards Perforce. Perforce has a number 
of features that CVS doesn't seem to have. I might be wrong. Some of these 
features include atomic check-ins (related changes are checked in as a 
single atomic transaction), change lists (checkouts/checkins are grouped and 
can be tracked), better branching and merging (so I've been told), and 
official tech support. I have also heard a lot of good things about CVS. 
Also, several people that I have talked with have recommended the 
Subversion Project (http://subversion.tigris.org/). 

A big difference between CVS and Perforce is cost. CVS is free and Perforce 
will cost more $12,000 to license. Does anyone have opinions to share 
regarding this decision? Some Perforce users have told me that it's worth 
the money, but I really don't know how much experience they have with CVS. 

Thanks for any help, 
Chuck