Why MSDN?
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I have VS2008 Professional, and I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade. I've done my searches, and I'm still unsure just what I should upgrade too. It's cash out of my business, so it's personal :). The installation I have has 2008 Professional that includes MSDN library. I don't think this is an MSDN subscription. Upgrading to VS2010 Pro is about 500, toss in MSDN subscription (one year) takes it over 1K. What does an MSDN subscription buy me?
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Have you considered buying an Action Pack subscription? It's a lot cheaper than buying VS with MSDN. You need an MS Partner account, but that just a matter of filling in a web form IIRC. TIP: as a devleoper, you need the Development and Design version, NOT the Solution Provider version. It comes with a limited MSDN subscription. The only thing I miss is Expression Blend.
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I have VS2008 Professional, and I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade. I've done my searches, and I'm still unsure just what I should upgrade too. It's cash out of my business, so it's personal :). The installation I have has 2008 Professional that includes MSDN library. I don't think this is an MSDN subscription. Upgrading to VS2010 Pro is about 500, toss in MSDN subscription (one year) takes it over 1K. What does an MSDN subscription buy me?
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Thanks all. It helps. Even the comparison table is a little light. I had forgotten about the spark program, and I've never heard of the action pack.
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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charlieg wrote:
What does an MSDN subscription buy me?
A few more steps down the path to the dark side. I have VS 2010 Pro with no MSDN (via DreamSpark). You may as well wait for the next release, it's due out last year.
Do you mean BizSpark? Or are you faculty? :)
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I had to get an MSDN Premium subscription to get my grimey hands on the database features in VS etc. it was an expensive little upgrade
Yeah, I don't see that happening unless I land some significant new business. > 5K gets my company's CFO's pants in a wad
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I have VS2008 Professional, and I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade. I've done my searches, and I'm still unsure just what I should upgrade too. It's cash out of my business, so it's personal :). The installation I have has 2008 Professional that includes MSDN library. I don't think this is an MSDN subscription. Upgrading to VS2010 Pro is about 500, toss in MSDN subscription (one year) takes it over 1K. What does an MSDN subscription buy me?
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
If your code installs on multiple OS's and / or outside the 'Anglo Saxon World', then access to all the different Windows versions in multiple languages can really help in traking down OS and localisation specific problems. As a mater of course, I now test install my releases on Virtual Machines running x86, x64, XP, Win7 and at least one non-English languages.
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I have VS2008 Professional, and I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade. I've done my searches, and I'm still unsure just what I should upgrade too. It's cash out of my business, so it's personal :). The installation I have has 2008 Professional that includes MSDN library. I don't think this is an MSDN subscription. Upgrading to VS2010 Pro is about 500, toss in MSDN subscription (one year) takes it over 1K. What does an MSDN subscription buy me?
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
MSDN library is a heap of sh*t. In half cases I find proper example/hint, but in other (remember: HALF cases!) I see some ugly, outdated for 10 years examples which also as big as people tried to write a whole operating system! They even don't use lambda syntax or shortcut for properties like "int a {get;}"! But who (in MS) cares? They worry about bells and whistles which is requested by thousands of diletants. Most useful help for the moment is Google. If they stop service MS' cr@p, thousands of lemmings won't write even line of code! MS definitely must be charged for keeping docs in a mess.
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MSDN library is a heap of sh*t. In half cases I find proper example/hint, but in other (remember: HALF cases!) I see some ugly, outdated for 10 years examples which also as big as people tried to write a whole operating system! They even don't use lambda syntax or shortcut for properties like "int a {get;}"! But who (in MS) cares? They worry about bells and whistles which is requested by thousands of diletants. Most useful help for the moment is Google. If they stop service MS' cr@p, thousands of lemmings won't write even line of code! MS definitely must be charged for keeping docs in a mess.
Yes, but we're talking about something subtly different. In the grand scheme of things, MS has done an excellent job confusing people. Somehow I had equated MSDN Library with MSDN in general and now I know what I'm really asking about is an MSDN subscription (completely different beast). And I agree, the MSDN documentation is sorely lacking. It's collapsing under its own weight.
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I have VS2008 Professional, and I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade. I've done my searches, and I'm still unsure just what I should upgrade too. It's cash out of my business, so it's personal :). The installation I have has 2008 Professional that includes MSDN library. I don't think this is an MSDN subscription. Upgrading to VS2010 Pro is about 500, toss in MSDN subscription (one year) takes it over 1K. What does an MSDN subscription buy me?
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Once I needed 4 MSDN licences, and found GREAT deals on EBAY Saved a lot of money
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At least with Premium edition, MSDN gives a quite cheap way to obtain many of the development tools, operating systems etc for development purposes. So if you need multiple products in development (for example, VS, SQL Server, Sharepoint in Windows Server and so on), I think it's a good option.
The need to optimize rises from a bad design.My articles[^]
Because that price difference is already in the subscription price.
All the Best! Sergey Kuznetsov. Software Development and Software Architecture addict since 1983.
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MSDN library is a heap of sh*t. In half cases I find proper example/hint, but in other (remember: HALF cases!) I see some ugly, outdated for 10 years examples which also as big as people tried to write a whole operating system! They even don't use lambda syntax or shortcut for properties like "int a {get;}"! But who (in MS) cares? They worry about bells and whistles which is requested by thousands of diletants. Most useful help for the moment is Google. If they stop service MS' cr@p, thousands of lemmings won't write even line of code! MS definitely must be charged for keeping docs in a mess.
An eloquent argument.
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I have VS2008 Professional, and I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade. I've done my searches, and I'm still unsure just what I should upgrade too. It's cash out of my business, so it's personal :). The installation I have has 2008 Professional that includes MSDN library. I don't think this is an MSDN subscription. Upgrading to VS2010 Pro is about 500, toss in MSDN subscription (one year) takes it over 1K. What does an MSDN subscription buy me?
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
MSDN is not the deal it once was. Back in the day, the documentation wasn't up on the web. If you had MSDN, you had really astonishingly extensive documentation compared to what shipped with Visual Studio 6 in 1997. Back in the day, not everyone knew about the Platform SDK. Awesome. You also got one of everything microsoft had; OS versions (did you test on all versions??!?), database, the full-fat version of MS Office. And the cost was way less than buying even a few of these packages one at a time. Microsoft figured this last part out, and upped the cost so it wasn't cheaper to buy MSDN than to buy Windows, Office, and VS. Sigh. You can get the docs off the web (in fact that's how VS installs). One advantage of *maintaining* an MSDN subscription is that APIs are forever, but API documentation comes and goes as microsoft chooses to deemphasize old products in favor of whatever is shiny and new. Having the old docs means you can install a new version of VS without suddenly forgetting a bunch of old APIs your legacy code is using. Very handy.
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I have VS2008 Professional, and I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade. I've done my searches, and I'm still unsure just what I should upgrade too. It's cash out of my business, so it's personal :). The installation I have has 2008 Professional that includes MSDN library. I don't think this is an MSDN subscription. Upgrading to VS2010 Pro is about 500, toss in MSDN subscription (one year) takes it over 1K. What does an MSDN subscription buy me?
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
We use MSDN Premium with MSDN, every developer has a copy. I not only gives us VS2010, but all of the OS's including server, SQl server, Office, Visio, Project and a whole other bunch of product. What we pay for it is cheap if you add up the costs of the individual products.
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Have you considered buying an Action Pack subscription? It's a lot cheaper than buying VS with MSDN. You need an MS Partner account, but that just a matter of filling in a web form IIRC. TIP: as a devleoper, you need the Development and Design version, NOT the Solution Provider version. It comes with a limited MSDN subscription. The only thing I miss is Expression Blend.
I agree with the Microsoft Action Pack subscription route (MAPS). I've been using this for licenses and software downloads for about 8 years now and always have the most recent Visual Studio available for my use (as well as earlier versions assuming that I save the downloads and keep them locally). I also get multiple licenses for Windows (both desktop and server) and the office applications all for a very reasonable price. The design and development version also includes an MSDN subscription which is a highly reduced offering compared to regular MSDN subscriptions but nevertheless you get most of what you need to develop software including additional licenses for Windows and Office. The only thing that I could use but am otherwise missing is the Team Foundation Server (TFS) software but that also can be purchased by itself for about the same cost as MAPS -if you really need it. Otherwise, there are reasonable no cost solutions for code change tracking (such as GIT) although TFS does include much more that just change tracking. At a cost of about $500 per year this is a very reasonable way for a small business like mine to keep up to date with the most recent development software including the most recent Expression Web offerings.
Jerry W. Manweiler, Ph.D. Fundamental Technologies, LLC
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I have VS2008 Professional, and I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade. I've done my searches, and I'm still unsure just what I should upgrade too. It's cash out of my business, so it's personal :). The installation I have has 2008 Professional that includes MSDN library. I don't think this is an MSDN subscription. Upgrading to VS2010 Pro is about 500, toss in MSDN subscription (one year) takes it over 1K. What does an MSDN subscription buy me?
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
charlieg wrote:
I have VS2008 Professional, and I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade. I've done my searches, and I'm still unsure just what I should upgrade too. It's cash out of my business, so it's personal :) .
Offhand I'd say upgrade if the newer version has something you really need. If not ... why bother? Executables built by VS2008 are going to run on all Windows platforms from XP up (except "Metro" of course - but even VS2010 won't do that). Simple as that. Don't just upgrade because you perceive it to be "cool" or anything - does it have anything you really NEED? -CB
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killabyte wrote:
the database features in VS
I don't use those anyway. SQL Server Express suffices for my needs.
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
I don't use those anyway. SQL Server Express suffices for my needs.
Same here. I bought VS2008 Standard and Active Reports 6. That combined with SQL Server 2008 R2 Express (which I keep under lock and key by the way) makes for a powerful development package, all for under $1K. It will be some time before I need to shell out any more $ for development tools. -CB
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charlieg wrote:
I have VS2008 Professional, and I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade. I've done my searches, and I'm still unsure just what I should upgrade too. It's cash out of my business, so it's personal :) .
Offhand I'd say upgrade if the newer version has something you really need. If not ... why bother? Executables built by VS2008 are going to run on all Windows platforms from XP up (except "Metro" of course - but even VS2010 won't do that). Simple as that. Don't just upgrade because you perceive it to be "cool" or anything - does it have anything you really NEED? -CB
CodeBubba, you summed it up there. Like you imply there is a big difference between WANT and NEED. I see little value in wanting because its cool so I buy because I need it. Hence I've licences for UltraEdit since it was first released and I'm a big fan of Resharper and DevExpress. If I had the spare cash, I'd certainly buy another MSDN subscription. Right now, I have 10 licences for each of the four versions of Win7 and I've only used three of them in total. The problem with MSDN is that the proverbial devil in the detail applies to the T&C.
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CodeBubba, you summed it up there. Like you imply there is a big difference between WANT and NEED. I see little value in wanting because its cool so I buy because I need it. Hence I've licences for UltraEdit since it was first released and I'm a big fan of Resharper and DevExpress. If I had the spare cash, I'd certainly buy another MSDN subscription. Right now, I have 10 licences for each of the four versions of Win7 and I've only used three of them in total. The problem with MSDN is that the proverbial devil in the detail applies to the T&C.
I guess the reason I brought up the "cool" point was because I've seen cases (the shop I'm in now) upgrade the software tools needlessly. We once had a "software architect" (who wasn't really qualified for that post as he really had no clue about design) that kept upgrading our tools because of some new "cool" feature. Our product is saddled with some technologies that would best have been left out because of this. As for my own software development which is mainly stuff for my own use and an occasional small client there simply is no reason to retool myself right now. I'm not using the full feature set of VS2008/ActiveReports/SQL 2008 as it is. The stuff I've got now is "cool" enough and, more importantly, it just plain works. I can trust it. In my particular case it would be the height of stupidity for me to lay down cash for any kind of tool upgrade until said tools give me something I just got to have. The old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is really applicable here. -CB
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I had to get an MSDN Premium subscription to get my grimey hands on the database features in VS etc. it was an expensive little upgrade
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I have VS2008 Professional, and I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade. I've done my searches, and I'm still unsure just what I should upgrade too. It's cash out of my business, so it's personal :). The installation I have has 2008 Professional that includes MSDN library. I don't think this is an MSDN subscription. Upgrading to VS2010 Pro is about 500, toss in MSDN subscription (one year) takes it over 1K. What does an MSDN subscription buy me?
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
I buy MSDN for one reason: To get all the OS versions I need for platform testing. I have to certify software on the 3 most recent OS versions in English, French, German, Spanish, and Traditional Chinese. I occasionally have to test on other systems as well, when bug reports come in from other countries. It's useful that the subscription comes with the latest VS releases, and OS release candidates that I can do "heads up" testing on. I think the knowlegebase sucks. I do better on a general web search to find solutions for problems.