Visual Studio Standard 2008 Win32 DVD

Product Description
Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition UK

Express Edition or Standard?
If you are not developing commercial software then do not waste your money. The free Express Edition will do all you want.
But if you are writing commercial software then you should buy the product. There are many different editions to choose from, so I will not say the Standard edition is best. It does everything I want (but then so does the Express Edition).

Typical Microsoft
This looks to be a very comprehensive suite, with a lot of useful tools for developers, however buying this product has mirrored my experience of buying Microsoft's Visual Basic Developer's kit a few years ago - the samples provided do not work straight out of the box. My previous experience found that Microsoft later issued a pack containing revised samples (which to be fair, then worked perfectly), but no sign of that for this product yet.

So I either have to not use the samples, and start learning from scratch, use a product support call to find out what the problem is, or wait in the hope that Microsoft will get around to sorting it out in their own time.

Bigger is not always better....
I've just upgraded from the original VS 2002, I wanted to start using some of the newer controls for a new project.
My primary usage is ASP.Net, in VB.
Now the first thing I noticed was that new tabs are opened on the left rather than the right. I don't know which muppet at Microsoft thought this was a good idea, but they were 100% wrong! It seems a trivial thing, but it just constantly annoys, every time you open a new window. Microsoft really need to address this, every other tabbing system opens new tabs on the right, it's just common sense.

The other major problem is the speed of the IDE, sometimes editing a page with 2 dozen controls on it can take 20 seconds to refresh! That's using XP on a 9600 quad core machine, 4 GB ram and raid 0 drives!
I've downloaded patches and disabled features I don't need but it's still easily 4 times slower than VS 2002. These speed issues come and go, with no apparent pattern, and disk usage becomes excessive.

These two problems can seriously extend development times.
There can be no excuse from microsoft, this should never have got out of beta testing.

It's a real shame because I really like the new features.

I'm hoping microsoft will release some patches to fix these issues soon.
With these out of the way, it would be an amazing product.

This software suite is well out of date!
Amazon stick's the Kid's Review at the top discredit feedback unless it is positive? I am only trying to save you some time and money.

The DVD has a date of 2007 on it! Microsoft makes continual improvements to the package and these 2007 DVDs have been sitting in Amazon stock room collecting dust. The last two reviews were correct and relevant in that they were made just over a year ago. At that time the DVD content had currency. Now, the content is historical and archival. I would say buy the software from Microsoft that is likely to give you the latest version.
Unless Amazon state "Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition - 2007 Version!". It is then that you know this copy is missing about 14 - 24 month worth of improvements and updates. You can't even get Visual Web Developer Express Edition for it. Download was refused on the ground that the software installed was an earlier version and needed upgrading to SP1 before download of free development IDE. So I have given it one star because you save some of your money for getting the upgrade as you alreadyt have this old version. But then the question remain "How current is the upgrade, 2007/8 or 2009 upgrade!?".

Accessories:

Total Training for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Essentials - Featuring Windows Forms (Mac/PC DVD)

RELATED:

Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++ 2008

Visual Basic 2008 Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer)

Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Step by Step Book/CD Package (PRO- Step by Step Developer)

Visual Studio Pro 2008 (PC)

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Unleashed

Visual Studio Standard 2008 Win32 DVD & More...