So, VB6 is more important than VS.NET 2003 I suppose?

According to Soma Somasegar's last post, the following is/isn't supported on Windows Vista, Microsoft's OS which has to replace Windows XP:

  • Visual Basic 6 runtime and IDE. Supported.
  • Visual Studio.NET 2002. Not supported
  • Visual Studio.NET 2003. Not supported
  • Visual Studio.NET 2005. Supported with SP1 (now in beta) and you've to shut down UAC, till they've fixed that after Vista ships.

Now, I've to support code on .NET 1.1, written with VS.NET 2003 and thus I need VS.NET 2003. I don't know about you, but I fear a lot of us are in that same boat. So what does that mean? Well, it means that you can't migrate to Windows Vista until you get rid of that burden and move on to VS.NET 2005.

I then ask myself: what's wrong with VS.NET 2003's IDE that makes it refuse to run on Vista? Or is this misinformation and will VS.NET 2003 run fine on Windows Vista? Sorry, but I'd like to know up front before I have to repave my windows installation because the upgrade process to Vista rendered my VS.NET 2003 installation useless.

It's odd, as a stone-age IDE called Visual Basic 6 is supported on Vista. So, what should people do: move to VS.NET 2005 SP1, and run into these nice UAC dialogs a couple of times a day till they're either hammering their PC to pieces with a sledgehammer or move to Java/Linux, OR move back to VB6, OR... simply stay on Windows XP? I think I opt for the latter.

Oh, and for the people who want to spend their day working with slow software on their fast hardware, there's also the option of using a Virtual PC, like Robert suggests. Seriously, any developer who thinks that's a useful alternative should step away from the keyboard now.

So, Microsoft, why can't I run VS.NET 2003 on Vista? I think it's good to explain this before the crackpot conspiracy-theories start to emerge, or is it already too late for that?

3 Comments

  • Frans,

    I use Virtual Server for my development all the time, and it is quite fast. It helps to have at least 1GB of RAM associated with the VM, and to have hardware-assisted virtualization enabled. And I think I'll stay at my keyboard, thank you very much.

    And don't forget, MSBee will let you support compiling to 1.1 in VS2005.

  • We do our development on vpc's both for vs.net 2003 and vs.net 2005/team system. Guess what, it's fast enough!

  • Paul: well, I think speed is subjective, but I doubt it's at a speed I find usable. I already find VS.NET 2005 dogslow on my box, so a VM will decrease the speed even more, especially compiling or working with the winforms editor. Perhaps dualcore stuff helps, or when you develop on a laptop, it's slow anyway, but I won't settle for virtual machine slowness when I payed a lot of money for fast hardware.

Comments have been disabled for this content.