Vista/XP Laptop frustrations (from a developer)

[Joe Cochran]

I purchased a Sony Vaio a week ago with the intention of making it my
mobile development machine. I am a developer, and focus almost
exclusively on .NET technologies. Here is the story:

1) Installed VS.NET 2003 and VS.NET 2005. Come to find out VS.NET 2003
is UNSUPPORTED on Vista. This alone blows me away, that MS would
choose to not support a popular IDE that's only a few years old.
2) Installed XP Pro from my CD, computer cannot connect to the
Internet to download updates, as the drivers are not readily available
3) Reinstall Vista, download network drivers, save on thumb drive
4) Reinstall XP, install network drivers from thumb drive
5) Install VS.NET 2003 and VS.NET 2005

Now ...My sound does not work, My built-in webcam does not work. After
hunting all over the Internet for these and trying to install several
driver packs, I'm left with an incompletely functioning laptop.

Sony says: "Microsoft is making us put Vista on all these computers,
and we don't supply XP drivers for this model." I'm sorry, but you
just can't convince me that the hardware in these machines are so
dramatically different as to render the drivers completely
uninteroperable.

What a tremendous disservice these 2 companies have done
Microsoft: Not supporting VS.NET 2003 on Vista?
Sony: Not providing XP drivers to your own customers?

What do developers do in this situation? Do I need to create a dual-
boot system here?

 

[R. McCarty]

Download Microsoft VPC (Free) and build a virtual XP machine.
I just finished updating my XP VPC on my Sony Vaio notebook.
It (VPC machine) runs fine with a 512-Meg allocation of the 1.5
Gigabytes RAM available.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...02-3199-48a3-afa2-2dc0b40a73b6&displaylang=en

 

[Spocks Buddy]

better than that horrible VIRTUAL MACHINE download and install vmware
server
free and very good.. supports local and remote use of the virual machines...

 

[Frank]

better than that horrible VIRTUAL MACHINE download and install vmware
server
free and very good.. supports local and remote use of the virual machines...

Hey butt munch...you haven't used either one so stop lying!
Frank

 

[Frank]

Download Microsoft VPC (Free) and build a virtual XP machine.
I just finished updating my XP VPC on my Sony Vaio notebook.
It (VPC machine) runs fine with a 512-Meg allocation of the 1.5
Gigabytes RAM available.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...02-3199-48a3-afa2-2dc0b40a73b6&displaylang=en

Excellent advice! I have both x32 & x64 editions of VirtualPC 2007
working on Vista Ultimate x32 & x64 and on XP Pro x32 & x64.
I had used VMWare prior to using VPC. I prefer to use an MS product (if
available) on MS OS's.
Frank

 

[Alun Harford]

I purchased a Sony Vaio a week ago with the intention of making it my
mobile development machine. I am a developer, and focus almost
exclusively on .NET technologies. Here is the story:

1) Installed VS.NET 2003 and VS.NET 2005. Come to find out VS.NET 2003
is UNSUPPORTED on Vista. This alone blows me away, that MS would
choose to not support a popular IDE that's only a few years old.

It seems MS basically don't support VS.NET 2003 on any platform.

If you have VS.NET 2005 though, I'm not sure I see the problem. I didn't
think there was anything you could do in 2003 that you can't do in 2005
(although some things, such as defaulting to version 1.1 of the
framework - yuck! - require a little manual tweaking).

Alun Harford

 

[Joe Cochran]

If you have VS.NET 2005 though, I'm not sure I see the problem.

You may be right for winforms type apps, but my experience is that
websites written against the 1.x framework are pretty different from
those written in VS 2005. I want to avoid having to do any kind of
conversion work simply because the IDE isn't supported

Sounds like I'm going the route of Virtual PC.

It still bugs me, Ballmer's "developers, developers, developers,
developers", and then they pull something like this.

Thanks for the quick responses guys

 

[Dana Cline - MVP]

Not that it would help, but over in the Media Center forum we get a lot of
Sony issues...it seems Sonys are about as incompatible as you can be and
still run Windows. They don't make all the device drivers available without
a fight, and did you know you voided your warranty when you installed new
operating systems?

If you can return this machine for a different brand, I'd do that in an
instant.

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

 

[Alun Harford]

You may be right for winforms type apps, but my experience is that
websites written against the 1.x framework are pretty different from
those written in VS 2005. I want to avoid having to do any kind of
conversion work simply because the IDE isn't supported

You can use MSBuild (from the command line) to compile the project for
the 1.1 framework. It's not ideal, but sounds like your best solution.

Alun Harford

 

[Spocks Buddy]

frank.. I have used both of them, and a few other virtual machine
programs...

And of course as with everything I make educated and well informed
conclusions.

Same thing with vista.. even though you dont want to believe it.... I will
prove it,
with videos... I can even show the version on the desktop so you can be
persuaded
that not only I have vista... but I know more about it than you ever
imagined.

A tip: you can even use vmware player in combination with this site
www.easyvmx.com that creates a small file that is the start of the virtual
machine....

 

[Frank]

frank.. I have used both of them, and a few other virtual machine
programs...

And of course as with everything I make educated and well informed
conclusions.

Same thing with vista.. even though you dont want to believe it.... I will
prove it,
with videos... I can even show the version on the desktop so you can be
persuaded
that not only I have vista... but I know more about it than you ever
imagined.

A tip: you can even use vmware player in combination with this site
www.easyvmx.com that creates a small file that is the start of the virtual
machine....

Yeah right...does otenet know you're using their services to post your lies?
Malaka.
Frank