I bought VB .NET standard and paid AU$215 for it which was good. I read up about it but found it hard to find what the differences between it and the professional version of VB .NET in the Visual Studio.

I just wanted VB .NET and did NOT want to pay AU$2500 for C# .NET and the other bit I did NOT want.

Guess what????

Typical of Microsoft - I'm sure they very carefully select what they put into (or rather what they take out) of the Standard Edition to pi$$ people off the most.

In this case it's the ability to create CLASS LIBRARIES. I had a small solution with 2 projects and needed to have a class in common.

Much to my dispair I could NOT share this source as it would always physically copy the code into each projects folder.

VERY FRUSTRATING!

After wasting time (half a day) decided it could not be done and verified this by finding a site which listed the differences.

Q) Why is there not a VB .NET professional which does not force me to get all the other 'crap' I do not want or can not afford?

In desperation I installed the .NEt Beta 2 again which accidentally overwrote my .NET Standard (crippled) installation. (whoops).

Needless to say I ended up with an installation in an undertermined state.

I could not remove the BETA version and thought I was up some reformatting.

I ended up by "fixing/repairing" with the .NEt Standard and after 1 hours of buzzing from the disk it was "Repaired".

BUT - When I started up VB it now thinks it's the PROFESSIONAL VERSION of VB.

I was sceptical but my prject now loaded where it would not when it was in a bad way. Also, I have the ability to create Class libraries and all the other components missing from the Standard Edition.

Needless to say I'm happy with the outcome!

I would be happy to pay extra for the professional version but 10 times as much just to get class libraries????

I'm also a bit cheesed off that the conversion Wizard is not in the Standard Edition. But given the lack of compatibility and huge changes I can live without this but are faced with a large write and salvage operation.

Thought this may be of interest to others suffering with the Standard Edition.

I think the more people that have access to the class libraies the better. This is what people will be sharing!
BUT - When I started up VB it now thinks it's the PROFESSIONAL VERSION of VB.