Customer Reviews

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Standard Upgrade [Old Version]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm positive you're reading this because you are wondering what is eligible for an upgrade. Relax cheapskates, virtually everything makes you eligible:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/it-it/vs2008/products/cc263904(en-us).aspx

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Upgrade Pricing Eligibility

To qualify for upgrade pricing, you must be a licensed user of one of the following products:

* An earlier version of Microsoft Visual Studio
* Any other developer tool (including free developer tools, such as Visual Studio Express Editions or Eclipse)

Upgrade pricing eligibility does not apply for Volume Licensing programs.
"

If worse comes to worse, install the free express edition and register it, but it looks like any old version of Visual Studio will do.

You're welcome!

I held out upgrading the last few Visual Studio releases; I've been using Visual Studio 2003 for the last several years. Now I wish I had updated a long time ago. Visual Studio 2008 has several extremely useful features built into it.

My primary coding language has been and remains C++ console applications. That's one of the reasons I was "wary" of upgrading - I was worried that the newer Visual Studio environments wouldn't be as amenable to console app development - not true at all, it works great!

It finally got to the point that one of my apps was so CPU-, database- and thread-intensive that I just couldn't debug it effectively on Visual 2003 anymore - it would crash quite often. So I bit the bullet and went to VS2008 - and I am extremely happy that I did.

I've heard a few folks say that project/solution conversion is difficult... not true! I converted all of my "major" projects extremely quickly. Yes, I had to make some code changes, but that's because the old Visual/2003 stuff was more lax on what coding practices could be used. Mostly, the changes were security-related (buffer-overrun) stuff (which in my case was easily 'solvable' adding a particular preprocessor #define since most of my tools are for local use only), and some POSIX-related changes. Both were easily handled. Afterwards, everything compiled and ran with no problems.

I really like the much improved debugging interface in comparison to the older Visual 2003 environment(s). I love the new-and-improved variable/watch tracking and especially the simplified multi-threaded debugging. Good stuff.

The improved intellisense is also a boon - and if that was the only improvement, that would be worth it by itself.

So, this product did not disappoint, and maintains the excellence I've come to expect from the solid Visual Studio product line over the years. I am very pleased with Visual Studio 2008.

Last but not least, Microsoft on their corporate site states that they give you credit for upgrade pricing even if you're using the free "express" editions. So, it is perfectly acceptable and legal to download the express editions, and then use the upgrade package to get to the full Visual Studio. Also, the Visual Studio licenses are "user-based", which means that you can legally install copies for example on your desktop + your laptop, where you are the sole user of the program.

I think integrated support for linq and intellisense for javascript are enough to make this worth the price. Only problems I had involved 3rd party controls, but I think all of those issues have been resolved by the vendors now. Includes easy transition from ASP.NET 2 to 3.5 websites.

At first, I was a little bit disgruntled at being forced to upgrade so that I could develop apps for the newer versions of Windows and processors (Vista, WS2008, x64, IA64). That said, I am impressed and pleased with the new capabilities of Visual Studio 2008. Although some of the changes are about better window dressing, there are many improvements in the core technology.

There is much better support for current HTML and XML standards. XML document schemas are now actually validated and you get Intellisense feedback about XML schema violations in XML documents. An XML Schema Explorer was added, which gives an hierarchical tree view of a schema's types and elements.

I can't say that I notice a big difference in the area of C++ programming. While maintaining support for C++, it seems that Microsoft has spent a huge effort in improving the Visual C# and Visual Basic programming functionality. However, support for C++/CLI (the successor to managed C++) has improved and at least it appears to be more mainstream rather than just a kluge. Still, I continue to code in native C++ and hesitate to delve into C++/CLI.

From my perspective, I can't say that the high cost for the upgrade was entirely justified, but I'll get over it. There's no denying that Visual Studio 2008 is an improvement over the last version I was using (Visual Studio .NET 2002).

I like the changes from VS2005, there is much improvement. The addition of AJAX and LINQ support is great.

As always, VS 2008 does not disappoint. The UI is smooth and clearly laid out. Watch out for the "uses" libraries added to the default new ASPX form - they differ from 2005's and can break some older code.

I've been using Microsoft C++ since version 3 (This would be version 9, why can't they just use numbers like the old days?). I use this for a lot of programming, from ASP.NET web development to C++ MFC Windows coding. I'm not wow'ed by this upgrade but it continues to be solid development platform. I love the integrated help. On the other hand, it could have a smarter editor that would do some basic stuff like automatically fill in closing brackets and stuff like that -- hence the 4 star instead of 5 star rating.

For me, this is not a crucial upgrade. My client wanted to upgrade so that's why I did it.

Visual studio 2008 add some great features in adding support for the .NET framework through version 3.5
This is enhanced greatly by adding JetBrains ReSharper.

Have had one small issue with a bug using this product on a Windows Vista SP1 machine (it generates an erroneous warning while building a COM class library). Other than that, it seems to do what I need it to do.