Microsoft Visual Studio, take two

After a difficult time with the CD install, I tried the web install. I had more success with this version.

My complaints with the CD install I think are with the WinRAR utility and not the Visual Studio package. So I will state here: I find the WinRAR package difficult to use. It's dialog with the user is technical and while accurate it is not understandable.

Installation of MS Visual Studio from the web works well. Its one flaw is the download time. The initial screens load quickly. Once loaded, I picked the options I needed and then the long download began. Microsoft does a fairly decent job of showing the status of the download, listing the different components and the status of each.

The download took roughly eight hours. I have a 80 KBps DSL connection, which isn't the fastest but also isn't the slowest. For a single PC, this solution is acceptable; I would not want to use this method on multiple PCs. (For multiple PCs, Microsoft would probably recommend the "download to CD and then install" method, which is how I got the (broken) install CDs.)

Part of the eight hours was a power-down from Windows 7. Windows 7, like Windows Vista, enhances the screen saver by powering off your PC after a period of inactivity. This occurred while I was downloading Visual Studio. (I had left for some lunch.) There is a way to adjust the power-down delays, and even turn them off. Windows 7 has a setting for it. I know, because I found it once! But I haven't seen it again.

Moving on to Visual Studio: Once installed, I loaded several VS2008 projects and converted them. I had about thirty projects, and found myself wanting a batch converter. (Is there one?) They all converted and loaded without difficulties.

I compiled my projects, first in the IDE one at a time. Visual Studio 2010 has a nice new skin for its controls but the core seems unchanged. The compiler has the same problem of generating precompiled header files that was in VS2008. (The message is different, though, and suggests that you re-compile. Re-compiling sometimes fixes the problem. Other times you must delete the old .PCH file.)

At this point, I cannot compare compiler performance, since I am using a different PC for VS2010. I need to do a little more work compiling projects, then adjust my batch files for running the compiler without the IDE (the batch file builds all of my projects and runs tests on them) and then I can dig into debugging and editing.

My current impression is that VS2010 is a re-warming of VS2008, with prettier dialogs and frames but not much more. But perhaps the improvements are in other areas, like connections to MS-Office applications or development of Silverlight applications. (Oh, yes, the Silverlight component installed but complained about running out of logfile space. I'm not sure if that is a problem or not.)