;P You knew it was going to happen, eventually! You probably just overlooked this press release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2002/jul02/07-15WinCEautomotive.asp

I doubt its that different from other technology companies. I have two Dell's and a Toshiba in my office. The latter being a Laptop, one of the Dell's is ancient and not good for much more than a doorstop. Over the past 12 years I've had Wyse, Compaq, Gateway, IBM, Toshiba, Dell, Micron desktops. Never had an HP, although there are some around. We have standard hardware configurations from most of the major suppliers which most people order. Its the employee's preference usually. Often, when we're doing a mass order for a group, we'll just order the same machines for everyone. Certainly this is the case for build and test labs where we have racks of machines. IT support? If you don't buy one of the standard configurations, you're on your own. Most people in the product groups prefer it that way actually. We're constantly trashing our machines to test some specific install configuration, installing the latest beta of an OS. When I was in VS, I probably reformatted my main desktop twice a month (only some of the time that was because of a pre-beta version of VS...:laugh: ). Later, Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, CE Automotive (formerly of VC++)

Even if you will never write one line of managed code (meaning .NET code), VC++ .NET is still a solid upgrade. Here are some links of just a few things that have been added since VC6: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnnews/2001/sept/vcnet/vcnet.asp http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/technical/articles.asp http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/default.asp, in particular, see the article on buffer overruns and Whole Program Optimizations http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/cplusplus/, this page has a few articles on the unmanaged C++ features These are all features that are significant improvements even if you're writing the exact same application you were writing with VC6. There are nice features about the IDE, even over what VC6 had. But, its a new IDE and will require some 'adjustments' in how you work no doubt. Beyond just the IDE, there are some really cool improvements in the debugger not discussed in any of the links above. The one that for me is almost worth the upgrade is a feature called "Step into specific". You know when you make a function call, and as parameters to the function call you use other functions? Well, if its the outside call, or just one of the parameters, that you want to step into and the rest you want to ignore, you can right-click on the statement (before you've F10'd into anything) and choose the specific function you want to step into. There are other treats like that hidden around that you'll grow to really like. Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC

Standard doesn't have the optimizing compiler, some Wizards (for Enterprise types of applications) and the Data tools (maybe a little more, but that is the gist of it). Its geared toward the hobbiest, I don't know if there are any EULA restrictions or not. I would say, if you're not building a commercial product, its a good deal. Its really not the tool to get if you want to do something professionally. Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC

There have been a couple of articles in MSDN Mag about ATL Server and Attributes. I haven't seen much on the updates to the core ATL. Attributes: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/04/Attributes/Attributes.asp ATL Server: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/1000/atlserv/atlserv.asp The ATL Server article might be a little out of date at this point as it was written quite a while ago. There are a couple of books in the works, I don't know of any that have been released to date. This article on MSDN News covers some of the new features in ATL, its focus is on MFC developers but discusses features in ATL that are available to both. I imagine there have been some other pieces on sites like this, but I haven't really tracked them much. Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC

Hah! If I had an inside line I'd have one in my living room already...;^) We can't get them. Anyone at MS I know who has one ordered it at Target or Toys r us many weeks ago. I ordered mine retail as well, won't be here for a while. Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC

It was no rumor...;^) I don't recall it if was ColdFusion for sure, but there was some surprise about a PDC Registration site not using ASP (I think it was PDC '00, not PDC '01). Use the right tool for the job is exactly the approach I suggest. The more tools you have in your tool chest, the better off you'll be. I've worked on Microsoft's C++ for 11 years, but certainly wouldn't tell someone that everything they do should be in C or C++. That's exactly why Microsoft produces VB, VC and now C#, and that the CLR is designed for a wide variety of languages. Its why we have ASP.NET, ATL Server, ISAPI, FrontPage; Fox, Access, SQL Server; ADO, OLEDB; Etc, etc. I'll be the first to agree with anyone who suggests we do a crap job of guiding people to the technology that is best to solve their problem. Later, Walter

It was all FreeBSD, no Linux. It was migrated over in pieces, some migrations didn't work too well on NT4 but after Win2k shipped they were able to port everything. Its currently all an ISAPI based application written before ATL Server existed. I'm sure they are considering, if not implementing, a migration of parts of their app to .NET technologies. The ColdFusion stuff was on a conference registration site as I recall, it was done by an outsourcing company. Its like the ASP stuff on Sun's website. You contract it out and they use the technology their familiar with. I'm not aware of any ColdFusion stuff on ms.com or msn.com, but you never know. I wouldn't be surprised to see it in third-party supplied content. Later, Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC

Hotmail is probably starting to implement pieces with .NET. MSN's homepage is now implemented with ASP.NET. That was done with the redesign that happened last week. If you look at Passport, its now live with their ATL Server implementation, as are pieces of MSN Communities. These sites are live on the beta bits (post beta2 usually). We're trying to go out of our way to make sure VS.NET is a rock solid product for you guys. Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC

In VS.NET (VC 7), right click on your project in the Solution Explorer and choose properties. The General tab has an option fo "Minimize CRT Use in ATL", switch this to Yes and you should statically link to the CRT's. If you build it with V6, if you use the min_dep project configuration you will statically link to the CRT's and no longer require that DLL. You can distribute that DLL with your ActiveX Control and put it in the same directory as your control and that should work. Later, Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, MFC/ATL

It'll run fine on other platforms except Windows 95. That is the only platform that has been dropped for the release of GDI+ (well, and NT 3.x as well). Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC

Win98/ME are the only 9x platforms supported. Win95 isn't supported by GDI+. This was a technical and resource based decision. We have so many platform combinations to test on that adding another set dramatically increases the Development/Testing burden. That said, you could try and see if it'll work for your application, it might work. I don't think any platform checks exist in the GDI+ code (but I could be wrong about that). Microsoft won't lobby for your imprisonment for such activities...;) We don't support, and wouldn't service pack, any issues resulting on Win95 only for this DLL. That is the main thing to take away from the license agreement. The other very important thing is to make sure you're installing it into your apps directory. In general, Microsoft is going to try and restrict the DLL's (including our own) that get installed into the \system directories...it just causes too many versioning problems. Later, Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC

VC++ isn't dead. MFC isn't dead. ATL isn't dead. C++ developers are very important and strategic customers for Microsoft. We will continue to listen and enhance the C++ product for many years to come. Don't forget that every product Microsoft ships is built with Visual C++, many of which heavily use MFC and/or ATL as well. With that, the CLR and C# are great new tools and should be seriously considered for new application development. They're going to be very useful, even if you also have to use C++ as well. Its just another tool in your arsenal to apply to the appropriate problems. Later, Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC

I wanted to get your take on something, just for kicks. In performance discussions, at Microsoft and with external customers, I often get Moore's Law thrown in my face when I talk about our focus no performance. My team (the MFC/ATL Development team) strongly believes that we need to continue to focus on performance. It seems this is one big reason people use C++, and in my experience, software developers don't have any problems consuming system resources as fast as the hardware developers can create them. Also, Moore's Law doesn't seem to apply as directly to dial-up bandwidth or other factros, just CPU speed and performance. What do you think? Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC

You should be able to publish articles on VC++ 7.0 improvements, I think Richard Grimes already has done so. If you have some plans to do so, send me some private email and I'll just double check for you...but I'm 90% sure its not a problem. Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC walters@microsoft.com

JD you're right. There is no RAD designer for MFC/ATL. The Wizard/Resource Editor combination of tools is quite similar to V6. The Class Wizard has been ripped apart into various locations around the IDE. Some people like it, some people hate it. I did try an early beta of RadVC and it was quite interesting. It gives you a very VB like design time experience for MFC. I didn't do much more than play around with it so couldn't comment on its strengths or limitations in a production development environment. Later, Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC

Thanks, I've enjoyed it and received a lot of valuable feedback. Keep the input coming. We're making some plans for the next couple of versions right now and this direct feedback is extremely valuable. Walter Sulivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC

Yes, it is. Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC

See my other post in this thread. Tony's quote was a little aggresive. It won't be removed from the SDK and may in fact be incorporated into future VC releases. When had WTL as a working concept of things we could do to ATL. It turned out rather well but unfortunately we couldn't properly incorporate it into VC. We had commited to ATL Server, the C++ Attributes stuff, updates to MFC and frankly we just didn't have enough people on my team to "productize" WTL as well. Its the kind of decision we, and many of you, have to make every day about your product. It was good enough that I felt releasing it in the SDK "as-is" would provide a lot of value to Windows C++ Developers. I knew there was going to be a lot of flack about lack of documentation, Wizards, and other "official" support but decided that even lacking that many would find it very useful. It was an experiment, releasing unsupported code. So I have to say that for those folks who think MS shouldn't have released it if we weren't going to "support" it, don't use it. For those who find it useful and are getting work done with WTL, I hope you are glad we put it in the SDK. And for those who wish MS would fully incorporate it into Visual C++, thanks! We appreciate the feedback, we'll strongly consider that in our future product plans, and I apologize that I couldn't deliver it in VS.NET. Later, Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC

Right now the plan for WTL is to leave it in the Platform SDK. Bugs, features and other maintenance on WTL is officially not supported. However, in reality, it will be enhanced a bit and serious bugs will be fixed. It will not be part of Visual Studio.NET. However, for releases beyond Visual Studio.NET we will be listening to the feedback of our users and could incorporate it into a future release. Thanks for your question, Walter Sullivan Lead Program Manager, ATL/MFC