Windows 7 Development Platform

Question

As some of you may have noticed, a few hours ago Microsoft released Windows 7 RTM to those of us with a Technet or MSDN subscription.

I unfortunately didn't have the opportunity time-wise to test the new OS. I'm asking of anyone who used it with Visual Studio 2008 during RC what was your experience? Did you feel the RC offered a stable environment for it? Did it behave well under Windows 7? In short, can I rely on Windows 7 as my soon-to-be development platform?

On another note, did anyone did any tests the new crt? What were the results?

EDIT: As an afterthought, I'm interested indeed in both 32bit and 64bit experiences, since the OS will go to just one of these machines.

Answer 1

I've been using Visual Studio 2008 under the RC for a while now. No issues at all. For that matter, I don't remember having any under the Beta either.

Windows 7 is good to go for development, as far as I'm concerned.

Answer 2

We've been piloting Windows 7 internally for some time now and have had very few if any troubles with it. I've personally been using it with Visual Studio 2008 (Full and Express) and have been very pleased with the OS overall. I recommend it. (It is fair to note, however, that we use beefy hardware, generally dual or quad core, 4GB RAM and good video cards for our pilot).

Answer 3

x58 chipset and i7 processing unit, Windows 7 RC x64, I had a lot of issues with programs locking up and crashing (not responding, invoking windows "Ill find out whats wrong! .. not) when you try to close the form. It kills development time.

Especially visual studio 2008, countless crashes and lock ups or delays. It does run good most of the time, but it has its moments.

My experience is that its not 100% solid.

I thought that it was weird, because its built in the Vista SP1 core, and my hardware runs Vista very solid, no hitches -ever-.

And yes, it was a fresh install of Win7, not an upgrade. I'm installing Server R2 though, so I'll see how that works out! :D

edit

I couldn't put my finger on it. Under Vista SP1/SP2 it runs rock solid. The video drivers worked great however for my GTX295, motherboard BIOS is up to date.

I don't think that the problem was driver related per-se, but I can't say. The symptoms purely came across as a software related issue with the OS and how it handles the Windows.

The Event logs are not a help, because a generic form crashing doesn't produce any real detail for me to burn through and say "Ah ha!".

I must say though, it was mostly Visual Studio and forms run under the debugging host process. Anything else was pretty okay, so it could be more or less just a compatibility issue

edit

After a fresh install of Windows Server R2 RC, after the initial installation and a driver install for a wireless adapter, the system fails to boot up properly (or atleast "detects" an problem), so you have to manually tell it to boot Windows up normally, which works.

After doing some Windows updates, same thing, but this time the OS fails even when trying to boot up normally and just does a reboot (probably a blue screen, but surpressed by my BIOS)

My experience with R2 was blazingly fast, both in performance and a drop in satisfaction and warm fuzzies about it working good

It seems that either way you go, on the newest of new hardware, it has its issues. Bummer.

Answer 4

I been using windows 7 (x86) for few month now, never had a single problem with that. Visual Studio 2008, Adobe products, Netbeans and everything else running just fine.

Answer 5

The best way to write Win7 compatible programs is to use Win7 as a development platform. I use Win7 x64 with Visual Studio 2008 almost half a year and it looks pretty stable and has some helpful features (e.g. snap). At this moment all my programs are ready for certification and compliant with all Win7 requirements. I use VirtualBox to test my programs in Windows XP/Vista environment and VirtualBox works without any problems on Win7 too.

My hardware is Intel Q6600 processor on ASUS P5KC motherboard. ATI video card was unstable until some build of drivers, now it works fine. NVidia video card has no problems all the way.

Answer 6

Win7 RC1, VS 2008 SP1 here. The only issue so far is graphical glitches in drawing VisualSVN icons in the Solution Explorer if I scroll the projects tree using mouse wheel.

Also sometimes Tortoise SVN cache crushes. But it might not be related to Windows 7.