Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Upgrade Review

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(More customer reviews)This is definately the best Visual Studio ever. I've been using it ever since the beta was released and bought the upgrade the very day my beta expired. I am amazed that so many things I wish VS did, now it does. I recently had to develop something in VS 2003 [due to framework requirements] and felt totally crippled after having the luxuary of Visual Studio 2008. Definately worth the upgrade!

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Visual Studio Pro 2008 Win32 English UPG DVDGeneralCategory:ApplicationsSubcategory:Visual StudioDistribution Media:DiskPackage Type:License w/DVDPlatform:WINSystem Requirements / OS Required:32-Bit WinUNSPSC CodeUNSPSC Code:43232407

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Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN Renewal Review

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(More customer reviews)I have had an MSDN subscription for many years now and I used to renew it every year through Microsoft directly. A few years ago I decided to check out Amazon to see if they sold it. Why yes they did! It's the exact same thing you get through Microsoft. And it was CHEAPER then renewing through Microsoft each year. And you know what? Money in my pocket is where it should stay :) Now every year when Microsoft calls me to renew, I proudly announce to them "Thank you, yes I will ... through Amazon!" You should too!

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Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN Subscription provides an integrated environment that simplifies application development with advanced tools ready to tackle the most difficult problems. Whether writing code, building databases, testing or debugging, you can increase individual and team productivity using powerful tools that work the way you work. Unleash your creativity with innovative design and development tools that let you bring your vision to life. Take control of your source code with sophisticated database tools to help ensure that your application and database stay in sync. Superior code analysis tools help you avoid creating bugs during development and advanced testing and debugging tools let you find and fix any bugs quickly and easily to help ensure scalable, high quality solutions.

MSDN Renewal Version You must have an existing active subscription in order to purchase a subscription renewal. The 12-month subscription to MSDN includes access to the following:
Visual Studio Team Foundation 2010 Server and one (1) Client Access License
Microsoft Expression Studio 3
Production use of Office Professional Plus 2010, Project Professional 2010, and Visio Premium 2010
Windows Azure
Windows and Windows Server operating systems
Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft SQL Server
Four (4) technical support incidents
Two (2) E-learning collections

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium
Creativity UnleashedCreate what you can imagine with powerful editing and visual design tools. Visual Studio opens new possibilities for your applications by unlocking the power of the processor on your local machine and in the cloud.


Creativity Unleashed Create what you can imagine with powerful editing and visual design tools. You'll spend more time turning your ideas into customer value and less time debugging thanks to advanced code analysis and debugging tools.

Simplicity Through Integration Visual Studio 2010 Premium offers an integrated environment where developers use existing skills to model, code, debug, test, and deploy solutions.

Quality Code Ensured Powerful tools for maintaining source code and finding and fixing bugs. You can automate user interface testing and use advanced debugging tools to ensure you are building the right application, the right way.

Top Ten Benefits
Database Development Made Easy Apply the same life-cycle tools to your database code that you apply to your application code. This includes offline development of database schema, use of source code control to persist versioned database schema information and participation in Agile or other process methodologies and use of the associated work items.

Identify Test Impact from Code Changes Test Impact Analysis provides a list of recommended tests to run after code changes are made. Developers know immediately which tests are impacted by a given code change and testers know exactly which tests to run to verify a given build.

Profile Application Performance Measure the performance of your applications and locate performance bottlenecks in CPU utilization, Memory consumption, database interactions, Jscript/Ajax call patterns and concurrency synchronization. Use the performance profiler in conjunction with Load Testing to identify performance bottlenecks under stress and load.

Discover Common Coding Errors Code Analysis is now simple to configure with customizable rule sets that can be targeted at specific scenarios or areas of emphasis. Enforce rule sets with the code analysis checkin policy to reduce common coding errors in application or database code before they get into production.

Automate User Interface Testing Use Coded User Interface Tests to automate the testing of UI elements in your applications. Visual Studio 2010 automatically generates test code that can be executed manually or incorporated as part of your build process to automate UI regression testing.

Generate Realistic Test Data Use data generation to fill a test database with data that is appropriate for the schema of the database but unrelated to the production data.

Test First Development Made Easy Focus on your application logic while all the stub code necessary for your unit tests to compile is generated by Visual Studio.

Build Collaboration Solutions on Microsoft SharePoint Get the latest in support for SharePoint development, including tooling for Web Parts, Lists, Workflows, Events and more, so you can bring great new customized collaboration tools to your company.

New WPF Based Editor Provides Rich Visualizations for Your Code The rich visualization power of Windows Presentation Foundation in the new Visual Studio 2010 Premium editor makes it possible to overlay your own custom features on top of your code.

MSDN Subscription Included MSDN Subscriptions are a convenient way to cost-effectively develop applications on the Microsoft platform with a simple licensing model and broad high quality information resources

Visual Studio 2010 Feature Comparison
† Azure benefit includes 250 compute hrs/mo, 7.5 GB storage, 3 GB SQL Server database capacity, 1M .NET messages/month †† Azure benefit includes 100 compute hrs/mo, 5 GB storage, 2 GB SQL Server database capacity, 500k .NET messages/month††† Azure benefit includes 50 compute hrs/mo, 3 GB/mo storage, 1GB SQL Server database capacity, 300k .NET messages/month 1. May require one or more Microsoft Visual Studio Load Test Virtual User Pack 2010 2. Requires Team Foundation Server and a Team Foundation Server CAL 3. Requires Microsoft Visual Studio Team Lab Management 2010 4. Per-user license allows unlimited installations and use for designing, developing, testing, and demonstrating applications. UML is a registered trademark of Object Management Group, Inc. Windows is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

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Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Review

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(More customer reviews)Visual Studio 2008 is the latest version of Visual Studio. Visual Studio is Microsoft's primary IDE. It can be used to develop console applications, Graphical user interface applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code as well as managed code for all platforms supported by Microsoft. It contains four major products Microsoft Visual C++, Microsoft Visual C#, Microsoft Visual Basic, and Microsoft Visual Web Developer. However, it is possible to integrate additional products like IronPython and IronRuby. I've integrated Microsoft Robotics Studio and the CCR (Concurrency and Coordination Runtime) libraries with my Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 (I also enhanced Visual Studio 2005 by downloading .Net 3.5).
Among the major enhancements to Visual Studio 2008 (as compared to Visual Studio 2005) are the .NET Framework 3.5, WPF, WCF, WWF, LINQ, and the language extensions in C# 3.0. The .Net 3.5/3.0 is really the item that provides most of those other components and Studio 2008 provides support and IDE. For us it is the language extensions in C# 3.0, for example, LINQ, and the more concise syntax to get lambda expressions to work that matters the most (the new "=>" operator). WCF (Windows Communications Foundation) is a new great programming framework that is used to build applications that inter-communicate. However, we are using CCR instead for that purpose. The CCR primitives are very easy to use and great for multi-threaded applications with, for example, autonomous agents. As I understand CCR is scheduled to be included with Visual Studio 2010/2011 but you can start using the CCR library now with Visual Studio 2005/2008.
Visual Studio 2008 Professional is targeted towards Professionals (software engineers, small development companies, etc.). If you are a student or a hobbyist you should instead down load the four Express editions of the products which you get for free. However, for serious programmers they are not enough. The four express editions are Visual Basic Express, Visual C++ Express, Visual C# Express, and Visual Web Developer Express. I will put a link for the free downloads in a comment that I will add later, and I will also give links for free .Net 3.5 download and CCR/DSS.
It should be noted that the Express Editions have significantly reduced functionality. They only include a small set of tools, and libraries. There is no remote database support for data designer, no extensibility, no class designer and several other tools, no Microsoft SQL Server integration, no support for plug-ins. x64 compilers are not available for the Visual Studio Express edition and there is only a smaller express edition of MSDN. Missing C++ related items are, for example: C++ Name undecorator, Spy++, ATL trace, MASM, Visual C++ Web deployment tool, Server Explorer, no create GUID tool, CRT debug library, CRT source code, ATL, MFC, OpenMP, C++ Support library, etc. Naturally Visual C# and Visual Basic are also scaled down. The standard edition have somewhat reduced functionality and is targeted towards rich and serious students/hobbyists and poor professionals.
I currently have Visual Studio 6.0, Visual Studio 2003, Visual Studio 2005, and Visual Studio 2008 on my computer. I am using mostly Visual C++ and Visual C#, and on rare occasions Visual Web Developer. For that reason I believe that I can contribute some information regarding the difficulty related to upgrading.
It was not too difficult to convert Visual Studio 2005 C++/C# code to Visual Studio 2008 C++/C# code and the interface changes from Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 were minor simple improvements and added community components, which was nothing to cry about. When I went from Visual Studio 6.0 to Visual Studio 2003 and then to Visual Studio 2005, there were a lot of interface changes to get used to and some of my favorite tools were no longer available (class wizard), and the project file extensions were also different. Some of the projects I worked on also had problems with syntax errors that appeared only after the conversion.
When I converted a medium sized Visual C++ project (65,000 lines) from Visual Studio 2003 to Visual Studio 2005 I got more than 500 syntax errors due to changes in variable (from wrong to correct) and due to changes in what kind of declarations was allowed (from wrong to correct). We also had problems with run time errors that appeared only after conversion from Visual Studio 6.0 to Visual Studio 2003. The reason was that Visual Studio 6.0 executables often were able to execute bad code, like functions returning pointers to stack variables. The problem was really Visual Studio 6.0 not Visual Studio 2003/2005, but when you converted from Visual Studio 6.0 to Visual Studio 2003 the bad code caught up with you. Goofy project settings could also not be converted. It was a lot of work to clean this up.
When I converted the same medium sized Visual C++ project mentioned above from Visual 2005 C++ to Visual 2008 C++ I got no syntax errors and it ran fine the first time. When I converted a much larger application containing several projects with mostly C# code but also managed C++ code that loaded dynamic link libraries built using un-managed Visual 6.0 C++ code, it built and ran problem free instantly. The Visual Studio 2008 Conversion Wizard is also nice. However, there was a small gotcha. If you are doing the conversion offline (without access to configuration control management) and you answer yes, to the question that you do want to have the project files made writable, then this might actually not happen, with the result that the conversion fails. The failure to change the read-only status of the project files happened only for the projects containing both managed and un-managed C++ code (in a mostly Visual C# application). I don't know if that was a coincidence, or if I goofed.
So it seems like the conversion from Visual Studio 2005 to Visual Studio 2008 is much less painful then previous conversions used to be. However, if you convert a Visual Studio 6.0 project to a Visual Studio 2008 project then you might have all the issues mentioned above as when converting to Visual Studio 2003 and Visual Studio 2005. However, this does not mean that Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 are similar. There are a lot of new and very useful components that have been added to Visual Studio 2008.
I already mentioned the language extensions in C# 3.0 (as compared to C# 2.0), for example, LINQ (querying data bases) which allows you to build strongly typed query expressions. Personally I am hoping that C# will in time more or less replace both C++ and Java. Another component I already mentioned is Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF); a new GUI toolkit that allows you to build extremely interactive and media-rich front ends (2D and 3D graphics and animations) for desktop applications (and web applications). The WPF Designer also provides a split view and snap lines for aligning controls and text. Windows Communication Foundation which allows you to build distributed applications (but we are using CCR instead). WWF allows you to define, execute and monitor workflows to model complex business processes, IntelliSense has been significantly improved and now supports JScript authoring and ASP.NET AJAX scripting. There is a Report Wizard, a class designer extension for unmanaged code, Object Browser improvements, and MSBuild recognizes when a system has multiple processors and uses all the available processors to reduce the build time.
I should add that I have bought two copies of Visual Studio 2005 Professional with MSDN from Amazon (actually my wife did) and I was happy with the price and the delivery. However, I did not get my Visual Studio 2008 from Amazon. As I am become more familiar with Visual Studio 2008 and gain additional experience from using I will probably edit or add to this review.


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MicrosoftVisual StudioProfessional 2008 Win32 English DVD DVD

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Visual Studio 2010 Professional Upgrade Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)For C++ programmers, Visual Studio 2005 was the best development tool.
Microsoft is always shrinking C++ feature set. VS 2005 had datasets, and
.NET Web Service Integration. VS 2008 scrapped those features.
VS 2010 is the first Visual Studio to not include Intellicense in .NET (only
native).


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Whether continuing to maintain applications built in Visual Studio 2005/2008 or targeting the latest Microsoft platforms, developers using Visual Studio 2010 Professional will search and navigate through code in less time, work across multiple monitors, and quickly find bugs. Now is the best time to take advantage of cost saving offers that provide you with access to Microsoft operating systems, servers and professional development tools at a fraction of the cost.

Easy Upgrade It has never been easier to upgrade to the latest version of Visual Studio. Whether you're maintaining a legacy application or starting a new project, Visual Studio 2010 helps you make the most of what you already have.

Save Money Today Now is the best time to take advantage of cost saving offers that provide you with access to Microsoft operating systems, servers, and professional development tools at a fraction of the cost.

Instant Productivity Take advantage of time saving enhancements to the core development experience in Visual Studio 2010 Professional. With 2010, you will spend less time debugging, stretch your IDE across multiple monitors and quickly navigate your code files.

Top Five Benefits
1. Visual Studio 2010 Professional enables you to optimize your development environment with seamless multiple monitor support, allowing you to visualize your code and debug on one monitor while viewing external help or a tools window on the secondary monitor.

2. Visual Studio 2010 Professional delivers new support for SharePoint development, including numerous templates for SharePoint components, tooling for Web Parts, Lists, Workflows, and Events so you can easily build customized collaboration solutions.

3. New Offer for Visual Studio 2010:Visual Studio 2010 Professional FPP now comes with a 12-month MSDN Essentials subscription. MSDN Essentials is a trial MSDN subscription that gives you access to the latest core Microsoft platforms: Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter.

4. Visual Studio 2010 Professional includes enhanced multi-targeting support, with new reference assemblies and the most accurate IntelliSense ever, allowing you to target multiple versions of the .NET framework with one tool.

5. Visual Studio 2010 Professional simplifies building standards-based web applications with improved AJAX frameworks, core IntelliSense support for JavaScript, and the integration of the popular jQuery framework, an open-source JavaScript library.

Note: Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN Essentials is a one-year trial subscription that provides access to the latest core Microsoft platforms—Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2—in addition to providing enhanced support from a professional community. Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN Essentials may be upgraded to Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN at the end of the trial period.
Visual Studio 2010 Feature Comparison
† Azure benefit includes 250 compute hrs/mo, 7.5 GB storage, 3 GB SQL Server database capacity, 1M .NET messages/month †† Azure benefit includes 100 compute hrs/mo, 5 GB storage, 2 GB SQL Server database capacity, 500k .NET messages/month††† Azure benefit includes 50 compute hrs/mo, 3 GB/mo storage, 1GB SQL Server database capacity, 300k .NET messages/month 1. May require one or more Microsoft Visual Studio Load Test Virtual User Pack 2010 2. Requires Team Foundation Server and a Team Foundation Server CAL 3. Requires Microsoft Visual Studio Team Lab Management 2010 4. Per-user license allows unlimited installations and use for designing, developing, testing, and demonstrating applications. UML is a registered trademark of Object Management Group, Inc. Windows is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

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