Add me to the list of people who think it's faster. We have a 400k lines of code winforms project with Developers Express controls, CodeRush/Refactor Pro installed, and various extensions. Works pretty good for us. We use C#, not VB, if that makes a difference. We all used the beta of 2010 just to get off 2008 because that was a nightmare for us. We would have to restart studio 5 - 6 times a day. Now we don't have to at all. I also maintain a 10k+ lines of code ASP.Net web forms application that works well to. Although, I will say I never use designers for that. It's also in C# and I can leave it open for weeks without restarting. I also use DX controls, CR/RF Pro, and various extensions.

I had that EXACT same problem a ton of times when we first started using the SMTP libraries... For me, it was only doing it on machines that had Norton or McAfee anti-virus installed. Both of those did real time scanning of e-mail as it was sent out. I'm not sure if it actually "hijacked" the connections or if it blocked those connections so that all mail was forced to route through it's proxy, but as soon as I turned off real time mail scanning, it worked fine every time. Your code looks fine to me. Looks just like what I had when I was running into the same issues. I stripped mine all the way down to the bare minimums for testing.

John C wrote:

Ahhh...I see. This is the disconnect. You are paying a premium for a special plan to have flat rate calling to long distance. I rarely ever call long distance so I'm paying the much cheaper monthly price which charges extra for long distance.

Actually, about 7 years ago (I'm in the US, btw), I had MCI phone service because it was only $49.95 a month and included unlimited local and long distance calling for a flat rate. With SBC (now AT&T) the standard 400 calls with no long distance calling was $39.99 a month. I didn't really thing that $10 more a month was any kind of "premium", it just was a better deal since my wife has family a few states away. She called them enough to make it worth it for us to just pay $10 a month in case she wanted to call more than she currently had. I think we paid a total of $5 - $10 a month over when we were on AT&T so we broke even some months on MCI and others we had paid more. I think in our area AT&T is the only one to offer phone services without unlimited long distance because they have different packages to choose from... But if you look at those packages you end up only paying a few bucks less to not have long distance than you would to just have unlimited. Or you can just have high speed internet and pay $2.99 a month for skype. It has unlimited long distance calling in the US, Canada, and Mexico. It works great too. You can get a box that you can hook a conventional telephone to. I've been using it for years.

I can get there just fine, it's not down for me. It's just ONE platform ready test. From the requirements: Effective October 2010 Competency requirements are closely aligned with customer needs. To attain the Silver ISV/Software competency, you must meet the following requirements. Testing Requirements Your organization must deliver one software application or solution that must pass one of the following application tests: Windows 7 Platform Ready Windows Server 2008 R2 Platform Ready Windows Azure Platform Ready SQL Azure Platform Ready Certified for Microsoft Surface Qualifying applications include developed and marketed packaged software solutions based on Microsoft technologies. Custom-written applications not meant for resale do not qualify. Note: If your organization has qualified for the Silver ISV/Software competency with a software test that is not in the preceding list, you must meet the requirements detailed here once your test expires to retain the Silver ISV/Software competency. I did ours in about an hour. And that included downloading and setting up virtual environments to do the testing (i had VMs already built). So it might take longer for you to do, but they provide all the testing software and instructions. All you do is upload the XML file once it's done and it's auto-passed as long as your pass the test. It was showing up in my partner account 2 days after I submitted it.

I think this boils down to what you need and what you don't need... Also, people comparing the MSDN Universal of 4 or 5 years ago cannot compare to what they offer now. The software is no where near the same. Before Team System came around, there really wasn't anything special to go after. You either got the dev tools or you didn't. Why does a 1 person shop need the architect version of visual studio? Why do you even need the database developers edition? That stuff is geared towards the large distributed teams that want all the development broken out by different people creating enterprise software. The chances that a 1 person shop is creating huge enterprise software is pretty slim. If you are doing it, my apologies, but also the best of luck to you. We have 4 developers (including myself who double teams as the manager), and we would be paying 3x what we are now had the partner program not been around. With our lowly $1450 a year, we get 10 MSDN subs, 10 licenses to Visual Studio Premium, TFS with client licenses, and a crap ton of test software that each of us has access too. Not to mention more production licenses of servers and client OS's that we will never fully use. Heck, I have 40 licenses to Windows 7 Enterprise that I haven't even found a use for yet. We look at whats available to us if we go gold, and for us the only reason to go gold is to get recognition, and in our market, being a partner is enough. When we look at the higher levels of the MSDN subscriptions with visual studio, there is nothing in there that would benefit us, at all. Even with the expression studio ultimate, the only thing you get is the stupid sketchflow which doesn't really make things any easier anyway. Most of the stuff, even in the premium edition, is mostly useless fluff that small 1 man shops can do without. Having early access to the betas are take it or leave it.. But getting a new copy of studio the day it comes out has kept us ahead of the game.

Wait, what? There is only one competency test to pass... Either you pass the one with a solution supporting Windows Server, or a solution passing compatibility with Windows 7. You can't pass either of those? If you can't, you have more problems than just being in the partner program... Those tests are dirt simple to pass... Even OUR application passed it and we consider the code in it sloppy and buggy. There is no requirement for Office or XML Web Services. None.

For what it's worth... Scott Guthrie just put the issue to rest once and for all. http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/11/04/silverlight-questions.aspx Silverlight is not going away any time soon, especially in the enterprise space, which I would assume is where a lot of us are at.