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Another option is to push greater responsibility down into the specific classes and have the application-specific code continue to deal in parent-class methods. For example, your power supply with a special feature probably needs a way for the User to configure that feature and observe the results. The application code could call methods like “Has special features.viâ€, “Show Configuration window.viâ€, “Get text description of status.viâ€. If the power supply has special features then show a description of the status of those features and show a button that lets the User open the Configuration window (possibly in a subpanel).

I would questions someones engineerings abilities who finds 150 Euros to be expensive for something which can make the difference between a properly working system and one which regulalry looses communication and/or trips the computer in a blue screen of death. If an engineer has to spend two hours to debug such an error caused by a noname serial port adapter then the more expensive device has paid itself already more than once. And two engineering hours are just the top of the ice peak, with lost productivity, bad image towards the customer and what else not even counted in.