Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 on Windows 7 RC

21May/096

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 on Windows 7 RC

And now for something completely different! windows 7 logo

After installing Microsoft Windows 7 RC on my Macbook in Boot Camp I decided to give the new Visual Studio 2010 beta 1 a try. If you want to try it out yourself checkout this blog post with various links to download pages. The installation of Windows 7 and Visual Studio both went pretty smooth. I already installed Windows 7 RC in VMware, but that was too slow for doing some actual development. So I decided to try out Boot Camp for the first time and install Windows 7 in all it’s glory and all.

However there were some issues:

My sound didn't work. But this can be easily fixed. Go to the Realtek downloads page and click the “High Definition Audio Codecs (Software)” link and click Accept on the next screen. I downloaded the executable and after rebooting I got my sound back.
The webcam is not supported. Actually that’s not that big of a deal, because my main OS is still OSX, and here I don’t really use it. But it would be nice if that was possible in the RTM version of Windows 7.
And last but not least. Because it is a Macbook I don’t have a right click button. I’m still looking for a solution but working in Visual Studio without your trusty context menu is not that easy. I suppose connecting an extenal mouse will work, but I haven't tried it yet.

UPDATE: I found a small application that enables the right click if you hold the ctrl button while clicking. You can download the Apple Mouse Utility here.

If you want to install Visual Studio 2010 beta 1, you can download the ISO file or use the Web Installer. The advantage of the Web Installer is that the inital download is only 5 MB and it only downloads what you need. If you want to create a Silverlight 3 (or 2) project you will need to install the extra Silverlight Developer Runtimes

Here are my first impressions of the new Visual Studio 2010 beta 1:

Nice fresh look and feel. It's not the Expression Blend design (luckily) because in the end it is still a tool for developers, so functionality is more important.
It has support for .NET 2.0 up to the latest 4.0 beta. I know VS has already had backwards compatibility since 2008, but it's still a necessary feature.
Startup time is pretty fast. Listen up you Eclipse/Flex Builder/Flash Builder!
Support for Silverlight out of the box. You need to install the developer runtimes, but the tools are already in the IDE. Also some drag and drop design capabilities are available for basic UI design.
You can start experimenting with Silverlight 3 beta 1, which is cool.

Well that wraps up my experiences with Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010 for now. I am really looking forward for the RTM version of Windows 7 so I can upgrade the laptop I work on. I have been working with Vista for the last 2 years and if I could use the 64bit version I can finally use the full potantial of my 4GB RAM.

Now back to enjoying the good weather

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Comments (6) Trackbacks (2) ( subscribe to comments on this post )

james swaine
May 25th, 2009 - 02:04

you do realize that on the macbook (even when you boot into windows via bootcamp), you can right-click by holding two fingers on the touchpad and pressing the button…
Alain
May 25th, 2009 - 09:24

I suppose that’s how it should work, but this doesn’t work in Boot Camp with Windows 7. I tried installing the Boot Camp 2.1 update for Vista from the Apple site, but no luck there. So far, I haven’t found a solution yet.
James
June 6th, 2009 - 13:12

Alain,

If BootCamp 2.1 update does not work for you, it is because it expects an x64 version of BootCamp proper to already be installed, which means that you’re SOL as no such version is downloadable from Apple.

You’re in the same camp as me, you’ve got a version of the MacBook hardware that Apple hasn’t blessed to run x64 drivers, even though it is perfectly capable of doing so.

I’m typing this from a early rev MacBook Pro running Windows 7 RC 64 bit build 7100, and with a working context menu!

Now for the sad truth.

How did I get this to go? The only damn way I could do so was to BitTorrent the full original BootCamp which already included x64 support, and then to install the BootCamp 2.1 update. Unfortunately such a BootCamp is only obtainable by purchasing a newer rev MacBook.

Only with Apple are you forced to pirate bloody drivers for your hardware that you paid good coin for.
Alain
June 6th, 2009 - 13:42

Thanx for sharing this here James.
Maybe this will get included in the next version of OSX (snowleopard).

Alain
Bfallas
January 29th, 2010 - 22:03

Hi there!
I try everything to work with win7 on a macbook.

I found the solution, look!

a) If you have windows xp start in step 1.
b) If you have windows vista start in step 2.
1-) you need to format and install windows vista, this will cost only a few minutes and you dont neet to activate a serial number, so you can get it from any website by searching “windows vista serial”, and you will have all the mac keyboard functions working on MSW vista by installing the bootcamp drivers using the mac disc installer.

2-) Open a web browser and download the file bootcamp utility for windows7 upgrade and run, it will take a couple of seconds to finish and then you will be prompt to restart.

3-) restart windows vista and make sure that the mac’s partition on “Equipo” folder is not there.

4-) introduce the installer disc for windows 7 and run the autorun.exe to see the installation page wich you need to choose “UPGRADE”.

5-) After installation insert the mac installer disc ant run the bootcamp driver installer.

now I know it will work at 100%.
Alain
January 29th, 2010 - 22:17

Thanx for your feedback