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Can I still buy Visual Studio 2008 ?

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We just announced the release of Windows Embedded Compact 7 the new release of the Windows Embedded CE, our small footprint, real time embedded operating system. To develop both the OS and the application for Compact 7, you will need Visual Studio 2008 Professional or above. Visual Studio 2008 is available in the Windows Embedded Compact 7 tool kit, so if you purchase Compact 7, you have VS 2008 in the box. Now, if you are an ISV or if as an OEM you just need VS 2008 to develop applications for Compact 7,you will need to purchase VS 2008.

I have been asked a couple times about the availability of Visual Studio 2008, given that the latest version of Visual Studio is 2010 and that it is not trivial to find a link to purchase Visual Studio 2008 on the Visual Studio Web site.

Be reassured, Visual Studio 2008 is still available for purchase and will be for some time. Actually VS 2008 will be supported for a total of 10 years (until 2018) and sold for 15 (until 2023). You can find information about its support lifecycle on this page.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2011
    don't live in the past. well someone thinking about Visual studio 2014 and c# 5 you telling about Vs 2008. well what you think about 2023 and 2018. this is old habit of MSFT that they always thing about past because past of MSFT is better then toaday. so they still love old day and become old days guys.

  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2011
    @Antony: I agree it is important to move forward, innovate, enhance, bring new features. But at the same time, it is as important to be behind our customers. How would you think the customer who chose a Microsoft technology for building a device that will have a 15 or 20 years life cycle would feel if we told him: "sorry, we moved on, now you are on your own" after 5 years? The embedded space requires long term support and this is one of Microsoft commitments and strengths. This doesn't mean that there is no work done to provide access to the latest tools to our customers...

  • Olivier

  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2011
    I am glad that VS2008 is still available.  As you point out in your comment, devices often have a very long lifespan -- those in the company I work for can last up to 7 years, and I know other types of devices could last much longer.  We still have many devices running Pocket PC 2003.  However, I'm not sure I agree the right way to handle that is to also force customers who write applications for those devices to also use old versions of development tools.  Is it not possible to release SDKs for development (both native and .NET Compact) for these types of devices?  It seems the right answer here should be to retain support for legacy devices but allow customers to move forward with advancements in the IDE.  Hopefully this is what your last comment hints at. Bonus idea: support for .NET Compact in the Portable Library Tools (blogs.msdn.com/.../announcing-portable-library-tools-ctp-justin-van-patten.aspx) would be amazing!  My team does WCF services, Silverlight, and .NET Compact for rugged devices and would love to share code between all three of these platforms.

  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2011
    @James Giving access to the latest tools to our Embedded developers is definitively our ultimate goal and on top of our mind. Sometimes there are hurdles that make it longer than we would like. In addition as our small group is driving a lot of things in parallel from OS platforms to dev tools, including services, and we often need to prioritize our resources. Keep in mind that we definitively don't want to force our customers to use outdated tools, we do our best to provide the right tools. -Olivier

  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2011
    Thanks for the feedback.  I know the world of resource constraints all too well!  It's just good to hear it is being considered and prioritized.

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2011
    For the last 3-4 years, our company developped a framework that was deployable on both standard and compact .NET framework. Now, with this "non" support of compact framework on VS 2010, all this is somehow stalled. We are forced to either stay on VS2008, upgrade the framework only for standard .NET (with support of 4.0)... or move to another target platform. On top of that, the strange story of Silverlight on Windows CE. We are forced to use a native interface.... Bit after bit, developpers and architects have more and more difficulties to promote the CE and compact framework platform.

  • José

  • Anonymous
    March 16, 2011
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2011
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 01, 2011
    @WilkoSki: you are not being rude at all. Your comments are legitimate and I totally hear you. As a matter of fact I am not the only one who hears you and there are several work streams within the Windows Embedded group to try and find solutions to this. Unfortunately the solution will not arrive over night as this has a huge implication in terms of resources needed. We have not let the managed ecosystem down and we definitively consider .Net CF as key. Give us some time to elaborate the best plan to bring the best solution. We are working on it. @All: please keep this kind of feedback coming. This is very usefull to help us prioritize the work we need to do. -Olivier

  • Anonymous
    April 04, 2011
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 05, 2011
    Thanks, this is definitively the kind of feedback that helps get things moving. I will keep you posted as soon as we can discuss what's going on for Dev tools. -Olivier

  • Anonymous
    April 05, 2011
    @All a while back I posted a suggestion on the Microsoft Connect site http://bit.ly/cnIkJD This is currently the 3rd most voted item under Visual Studio suggestions.  If you agree with the suggestion then please vote or comment on it.

  • Anonymous
    April 24, 2011
    Hi Olivier! I've read the comment thread, but I still can't understand if VS2010 will be ideal for CE 6.0 development. I currently only have VS2010 in my system and wondering if I have to install VS2008 for this embedded project I'm working on.

  • Anonymous
    April 24, 2011
    @Adinda. VS2010 does NOT support WIndows CE development (neither OS Design, nor applications development for CE/Compact). If you want to do Windows Embedded CE 6.0 development, you need VS 2005 to build the OS and VS 2005 or 2008 to develop applications. If you want to do Windows Embedded Compact 7 development, you need VS 2008 for building the OS and developping applications. -Olivier

  • Anonymous
    August 06, 2012
    I was trying to find the link to purchase Visual Sutdio 2008 Professional but I was not successful. Could you please provide that link? Thanks

  • Anonymous
    August 14, 2012
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 19, 2012
    for those who say move forword you must know that moving to VS2012 will force you to move to WIN8 because VS wont work on earlier versions of Windows so stick on your VS2008 regards

  • Anonymous
    April 13, 2013
    want to buy older version of VS where can i get it, paramount.zubair@gmail.com

  • Anonymous
    February 23, 2014
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 07, 2014
    People who are telling others to forget 2008 and move on to 2013 etc... I hate to tell you this, but some development platforms REQUIRE 2008 Pro. I'm a Crestron developer and you can only use the SIMPL Sharp plugin with VS2008 - So it has to be available because every single one of Microsoft's Crestron project's is written using SIMPL Sharp on VS 2008 now. You can't just chuck it in the garbage because another year has passed. There are still plenty of valid reasons for 2008 to stay around for a while.