Jim Zimmerman

I am still in awe as I write this.  My upgrade went unbelievable smooth and the graphics and speed of my computer is so enhanced, that I cannot believe it.

When I upgraded, it said that it would not be compatible with Visual studio and SQL 2005.  I just let it go anyway.  Well it seems that Visual Studio 2005 is fine, but SQL 2005 was not.  I still get incompatiblity alerts from Vista for VS 2005, but it seems to work fine. 

So this post has lasted a couple of days in Live Writer since I have been with family over the holidays, putting up all the Christmas lights and upgrading to Vista and Office 2007.  I actually went and bought a new graphics card which is what everyone should do if you have a relatively new computer.  It is worth it.  The graphics driver (which I had to download) is still in beta because they are coordinating it with the launch.  I hope it is the business launch and not the consumer one.  They already missed the developer launch which is us msdn subscribers.  Do not spend more that $100 - $200 though.  Unless you really want the kick ass stuff for games.

Since MSDN developers subscribers were the first one to feel the pain of this upgrade, I am very surprised that they did not have a simple download or fix to this issue with sql 2005 and Visual Studio 2005.  We are the early adopters.  At lease give us some consideration when testing this product.  We live in Visual Studio and Sql server as developers.  This was the miss.

After a few hours taking advice from others on what to do about SQL 2005, I installed service pack 2 ctp version of SQL 2005.  It did not work.  Luckily I found a comment somewhere where I could launch the new SqlProv.exe tool inside the SQL server executables directory and added my admin user over and now everything works fine now.  Thank god because I need to access my local SQL server for development. I think sp1 works also, but I jumped the gun a little and wen tight to sp2 since I had read a post about how sp2 ctp was the way to go for Vista.

I know I may drink the MS Kool-aid from time to time, but I have to honestly say that most Windows users will love to upgrade and should.  Never have I played with an OS that made me really enjoy the experience.  I know that I have a fast computer already, but the OS now matches what my computer can do.  So cool.  Now is the time to buy the dream machine if your's is a few years old.  Very much worth it!  You will be so much more productive, at least after you get over the initial awe of opening and closing windows.