I\'m using windows and I notice that a lot of functions are grayed out because I guess #ifdef GL_GLEXT_PROTOTYPES is not defined. One of these is the VBO extension. Should I
I recommend that you use GLEW to get rid of that problem.
It's a long story, but resuming, Windows' OpenGL library only exposes OpenGL 1.1 entry points, so all functions beyond that version are loaded with wglGetProcAddress. GLEW solves this problem by doing that.
http://glew.sourceforge.net/
Just link to GLEW and GLU/GLUT (if you use them).