VB 2005 Express for free

[jmcilhinney]

For those who aren't already aware, if you download and register VB 2005 Express by Nov 7, 2006 it is free. Note that this is not the beta but the RTM version and it is not time-limited. If you register before that date you never have to pay.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/default.aspx

[DiB]

Does it allow you to compile code?

[jmcilhinney]

It IS the RTM version. As such it is fully functional and there are no restrictions on distribution of software created with it. Follow the link I provided and click the Support link on the left of the page for more information.

[DiB]

i didn't download it buy November 7th, so does that mean I have to pay after November 6th 2006?

[conipto]

I saw this earlier today while trying to find the bug tracking site on MSDN. I assumed the world must know about it already, as I am officially USUALLY the last person to know .

It's so bizarre to think of Microsoft and Free in the same thought, that I wonder how many other people though "What's the catch" as soon as they saw it.

Bill

[Grunt]

I downloaded it, but for a free ide. I'd rather go to sharpdevelop.

[mpdeglau]

Reading the FAQ from the link provided I believe it says you have to pay $49 after a year.

[conipto]

P.S. - This would be a great thing to make "Sticky" on the forum.

Bill

[jmcilhinney]

It is free if you download by November 7, 2006, which is one year after its release date. Further, if you download and register by that date you NEVER have to pay for it, as stated in the FAQ:

12. Do customers who acquire the Visual Studio Express products during the free promotional pricing period have to pay after the first year if they want to continue to use them?


No, as long as you download Visual Studio Express on or before November 7th 2006, you will not have to pay for it.

I'm downloading the entire CD image just to be on the safe side. The standard setup that you download is a bootstrapper that will then download the components you choose seperately. I would guess that, as long as you have a registration code, you should still be able to use that method after the year is up. I'm not 100% sure though so I'm not taking the risk. Each CD image is almost 1/2 GB, but if you have a decent line speed and download limit then that's not a big issue. Get the images from the link below. Also, there are some pretty good extras for registering. I'm going to install VB, C# and VWD but I'll download C++ and J# anyway. They're free and they might come in handy in the future. I'm thinking that I'll upgrade to VS Pro at some stage but let's see what these freebies can do first.

CD Images
Registration Benefits

[jmcilhinney]

I downloaded it, but for a free ide. I'd rather go to sharpdevelop.

At this stage SharpDevelop is limited to .NET 1.1 if I'm not mistaken, so you miss out on so much good stuff in .NET 2.0.

[conipto]

So what's the interoperability like? For example, in VS 2003 I can write a single solution with multiple projects, and easily use a one time class library written in say.. c# with a VB project, all under on "Solution". With multiple Express products installed, do they interop well?

If that's the case, I may just use these instead of spending 2 hundred dollars on VS Standard..

This combined with some of the Free installation packaging programs could wind up a powerful alternative to spending the money..

Bill

[jmcilhinney]

So what's the interoperability like? For example, in VS 2003 I can write a single solution with multiple projects, and easily use a one time class library written in say.. c# with a VB project, all under on "Solution". With multiple Express products installed, do they interop well?

If that's the case, I may just use these instead of spending 2 hundred dollars on VS Standard..

This combined with some of the Free installation packaging programs could wind up a powerful alternative to spending the money..

Bill

I won't know until I've installed them, but the Express betas were seperate IDEs so these may be too. You could still have solutions in the betas, so you may still be able to have a single solution with projects in different languages, but perhaps you'll have to run the seperate apps to actually edit those different projects. The VB image is about half-way downloaded so it'll take most of the rest of the day to get it an C# installed (1.30 PM here now) but I'll report back then on that subject.

[conipto]

I hate my Cable company. I get 400 KB/Sec speeds.. and then *blip* the connection gets cut for a millisecond every 5 minutes. Although I found a way to restart the download where it cuts off, so I should have all 5 in about a half hour or so..

Bill

[jmcilhinney]

I hate my Cable company. I get 400 KB/Sec speeds.. and then *blip* the connection gets cut for a millisecond every 5 minutes. Although I found a way to restart the download where it cuts off, so I should have all 5 in about a half hour or so..

Bill

That's just plain showing off when there are those of us on 512 Kbps ADSL, and for whom the download just died at about the 250 MB mark. I'll schedule the downloads for my unmetered time between 2 am and 10 am I think. The sooner Telstra here is Aust. gets their collective head out of their collective nether regions and makes ADSL2+ accessible the less likely I am to walk into their offices with a loaded side-arm.

[robertx]

That's just plain showing off when there are those of us on 512 Kbps ADSL, and for whom the download just died at about the 250 MB mark. I'll schedule the downloads for my unmetered time between 2 am and 10 am I think. The sooner Telstra here is Aust. gets their collective head out of their collective nether regions and makes ADSL2+ accessible the less likely I am to walk into their offices with a loaded side-arm.

Have you looked at changing to iiNet or Ozemail?

Thanks for posting the link to the download site. For anyone who's interested, I installed it by changing the "img" extension to "iso" and opened it using Nero.

[jmcilhinney]

Have you looked at changing to iiNet or Ozemail?

Thanks for posting the link to the download site. For anyone who's interested, I installed it by changing the "img" extension to "iso" and opened it using Nero.

I take it you're a compatriate. I'm with Exetel, who use Telstra equipment, and I would prefer not to change providers if possible. Exetel are trying to extricate themselves from Telstra so I'll wait for a while to see what happens. Thanks for the advice on the extension. I was going to install IsoBuster, like Microsoft recommended, but I've already got Nero installed so using ImageDrive is definitely easier.

[Dave Silva]

So, the disc images... they come with the programs. But I read something about MSDN express on that same page. What, exactly, do they include in terms of documentation?

I'm really curious. I got a copy of VB.NET Standard 2003 from Microsoft a few months ago, and now there's this...

[jmcilhinney]

Ask Bill. He's the man with cable. I won't be able to tell you until tomorrow.

[conipto]

As far as the help goes, I actually kind of like it. The standard class definitions, member lists, samples, etc seem to be there for the random classes I could think of, but the first time you load it up, it offers you options for Online help.. You can use the MSDN Library online exclusively, Use the local help (pretty much the same as it was in 2003 from what I've seen so far, but blue and soft looking :P), or, Use the Local help - but also search online. It displays results based on where they came from, i.e, MSDN, the local help, or two Developer communities online that it also searches.

Time will really only tell if it's as usefull as what I'm used to with VS.NET 2003

Bill

[conipto]

One thing though - if you're used to having the box to type help questions in visible - that's not available. however, you can pretty easily set up the Help system to display different things when you hit F1 by default. I.e, I've set mine up to display "Members" if I hilight something like Button and hit F1. Pretty neat, but might have some learning curve to it.

Bill

[RobDog888]

All of MS' help documentation has been on the decline as from VB6 forward. .NET 2003 has basic information and allot of time nothing more then syntax information. I hope 2005 goes more in depth then just a sentence or two.

[jmcilhinney]

So did the different languages integrate into a single IDE Bill, or do you have to switch windows to work in a different language? Come on man, details!

[conipto]

So did the different languages integrate into a single IDE Bill, or do you have to switch windows to work in a different language? Come on man, details!

No.. You're window switching It gives an error if you try to add a solution containing a C# proj to a VB one.. And also, it doesn't even use solutions, the top level is project, until you add a second project. You can run both IDE's concurrently though, so that's something.

Bill

[conipto]

Also, I think one of the reasons the images are so big is that they all have SQL Server 2005 Express on each disk.

P.S. - Great tip about renaming the IMG Files, I was getting ticked off at the thought of having to DL some new burner software. They are in fact just ISO Images called something else.

Bill

[robertx]

Does Visual Web Developer 2005 incorporate ASP.NET 2.0?

[jmcilhinney]

Does Visual Web Developer 2005 incorporate ASP.NET 2.0?

Indeed. VWD supports ASP.NET 2.0 using VB.NET or C#.

[dim_kevin_as_human]

quick question, i have SQL server installed with beta 2. is there a need to reinstall SQL server? I'm assuming i have to uninstall .net framework 2 and the express beta, do I also have to reinstall the SQL server as well

[jmcilhinney]

quick question, i have SQL server installed with beta 2. is there a need to reinstall SQL server? I'm assuming i have to uninstall .net framework 2 and the express beta, do I also have to reinstall the SQL server as well

You should uninstall any of the betas you have and install the release versions, including Framework, IDEs and SQL Server.

[dim_kevin_as_human]

You should uninstall any of the betas you have and install the release versions, including Framework, IDEs and SQL Server.

alright, downloading now. at a scanty 220-230Kbps

[Negative0]

A quick tip for you all.

Do not install SQL Express first. I did this and then when I went to install C#, it gave me an error saying I had to uninstall all earlier versions of the SQL Express software.

Also, the .Net Framework requires Windows Installer 3.0 while the SQL and C# installs require Windows Installer 3.1. My recommendation is to just upgrade to 3.1, instaed of doing what I did and going to 3.0 and then 3.1. The windows installer installer requires a reboot, so I ended up rebooting more times that I actually needed to.

[Negative0]

Also,

If you are running ZoneAlarm on your machine, make sure you at the latest version (6.0.667). I ran into issues where I would get a BSOD indicaing vsdatant.sys had an error when I went to create a new project. I googled and found that vsdatant.sys is a ZoneAlarm piece, so I updated to the latest version of ZoneAlaram and that seemed to fix it.

[dim_kevin_as_human]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/ex...ort/uninstall/

read this before uninstalling, and to assist with the uninstall

[vbdotnetboy]

For those who aren't already aware, if you download and register VB 2005 Express by Nov 7, 2006 it is free. Note that this is not the beta but the RTM version and it is not time-limited. If you register before that date you never have to pay.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/default.aspx

thanx i just got finished downloading and installing and i'm now ready to start converting most of my projects. i must say that the improvements that they've made with some of the controls and the additions is awesome. thanx again.

[dim_kevin_as_human]

what happened to dynamic help and the command window? they aren't there, did i mess something up or is anyone elses like that?

[robertx]

thanx i just got finished downloading and installing and i'm now ready to start converting most of my projects. i must say that the improvements that they've made with some of the controls and the additions is awesome. thanx again.

Had a quick look at it for the first time. Very pleased to see the return of edit and continue and the dropdown list in the code window showing the values of all elements of the selected array - that was a real pain in 2003. Text, HTML and XML visualisers. Unused variables are highlighted. These are just a few things that I noticed - sure to be heaps more. Looks awesome...

[jmcilhinney]

what happened to dynamic help and the command window? they aren't there, did i mess something up or is anyone elses like that?

There is information in the help about displaying the command window and customising dynamic help, but the options they mention aren't available. Either that's a bug or they are two of the features you are paying for in the grown-up versions.

And also, it doesn't even use solutions, the top level is project, until you add a second project.

There is a setting in the Options named "Always Display Solution" or something like that. It doesn't really do much good mind you, given that you can't create a blank solution or open solutions with projects in different languages. Again, I guess you need to be getting something for your money with the other versions.

[jmcilhinney]

what happened to dynamic help and the command window? they aren't there, did i mess something up or is anyone elses like that?

Hmmm... just installed C# Express and it does have Dynamic Help. I tried the same shortcut (Ctrl+F1, Ctrl+D) in VB Express and it didn't work, so it seems that they did indeed leave it out. Hopefully they will include it in an update down the track. I'm quite sure that VS 2005 is still a work-in-progress to a certain extent.

[conipto]

Hmmm... just installed C# Express and it does have Dynamic Help. I tried the same shortcut (Ctrl+F1, Ctrl+D) in VB Express and it didn't work, so it seems that they did indeed leave it out. Hopefully they will include it in an update down the track. I'm quite sure that VS 2005 is still a work-in-progress to a certain extent.

The same info seems to be there, just not the dockable mini-window (Ctrl-F1 brings the help window up, as do all F1 combinations in some way or another). Why the heck would they remove such an obviously useful window, and only in VB Express?

Bill

[dim_kevin_as_human]

The same info seems to be there, just not the dockable mini-window (Ctrl-F1 brings the help window up, as do all F1 combinations in some way or another). Why the heck would they remove such an obviously useful window, and only in VB Express?

Bill

seems like they wouldn't...hopefully a bug. looks like they fixed that bug that made you lose the use of backspace etc

[Kal_Torak]

I was wondering where the bookmarks and some of the Task features are, that are mentioned in the help. >.<