Question

I have recently purchased a laptop to do some offsite development, as well some of my own work during commuting.

I am used to developing on XP, but the laptop was bundled with a version of Vista Home Premium (I had no say in this unfortunately). I tried to install XP on it, but it failed as the XP install doesn’t come with SATA drivers.

I am aware you can create a ‘slipstreamed’ version of the XP Setup with nlite, and will probably do so, though from my research this has been problematic for many people, missing drivers, blue screening etc.

I am trying to decide whether or not to pursue this option, or just accept my Vista install, so I want to understand what I will lose in way of development, such as IIS restrictions (is Cassini an acceptable substitue?). What versions of SQL, if any would I be restricted to. What else should I be aware of in terms of .NET development, or, for what I need, is Home Premium not a valid option?

EDIT

To answer why I want to go back to XP installation, I guess negative Vista press, and my innate snobbery against the word ‘Home’ in the name of my operating system :).

I am more than happy to stay on it, though, if I am not hobbled as a developer, as I would much rather get cracking with what I’ve got than suffer the pain of trying to hack a working XP out of a currently good system.

Thanks for your answers, and more than happy to hear more

Answer 1

I develop on this operating system and have had a total of zero problems with a any piece of the .NET stack, Visual Studio, MS Sql 2005/2008 and intermixing with pieces of the LAMP stack for PHP/Apache/MySql work.

The only gripe is that I’m running IIS7 and there are certain IIS6 HTTP post weirdness I’ve run into with Ajax and the [WebMethod] technique with a WebForms app. All it took was some research and a web.config change though.