Vista or XP for Dev Machine [closed]

Answer 1

A note about Vista-64 and Visual Studio 6.0: While the IDE will run under Vista-64 with no problems, the compiler is incompatible. If you're going to be using Visual Studio 6.0, you'll want to have an XP VM and use it there. (I speak from experience, because we have some projects where I work that are still using Visual Studio 6.0. We've moved the new versions of those projects to VS 2005 and will be moving them to VS 2008 shortly.)

Answer 2

There is another option: Windows 2008:

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/15/2325215

I thought it was interesting.

Answer 3

if you do web, iis 7 rocks the house, being able to have multiple hosts on one box has been a life saver for me, I don't know how to go back to xp anymore.

If I had to go back, server 2003 is the least I would accept, not having a real functional web server is just not an option.

Answer 4

I'd say go for vista.. IIS7 is great, and the memory allocation is smarter (Vista doesn't waste RAM, it fills it with what it thinks you will use in the near future). As for the background services... you can turn them off like you could in XP.

However... if the rest of the company is on XP, I strongly suggest you install an XP virtual machine so that you can test your apps on the same platform as everyone else.

Answer 5

I have just purchased a new 'barebones' box that came with Vista as the OS. I was apprehensive, having heard much bad press over time about Vista, but it runs just fine here.

On that basis, I'd say save the extra money you (probably) get charged for the "downgrade" and buy some more RAM instead.

Answer 6

If you run into problems with Vista and Visual Studio 2003 or 2005, try running it as administrator (Right-click, Run as Administrator). That solves the vast majority of the issues, especially when working with IIS, BizTalk, etc.