SharpStyle Labs

This series of posts will talk about setting up a development machine for development of Web Applications using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

You have a choice of the following operating systems:

• Vista/Vista 64 bit
• XP/XP 64 bit
• Windows 2003 Server/Windows 2003 Server 64 bit

Let’s discuss:

• 64 bit is not an option:
  • At the time this was written, Visual Studio didn’t support Edit and Continue functionality under 64 bit.
  • I wasn’t able to install Firefox (or any of its cousins) on 64 bit and if you are developing web applications, testing in multiple browsers is a requirement
  • there are a few other programs that had a problem running under 64 bit
• Vista:
  • Only recently ZoneAlarm started supporting Vista
  • I worked enough with Microsoft products to know that one should wait for SP1
• XP
  • If you are using a laptop as your main development machine, this is probably your best option as 2003 Server doesn’t support many important “laptop features”: hibernation, etc
• 2003 Server
  • If you are using a desktop, my recommendation to use this as your OS due to its stability

Mike Grushin
Partner, CTO