Setting up a Vista laptop for development

Question

ok, after some research here and there, it seems that the Dell XPS 1530 is a good laptop for .NET development.

I had some questions, mainly about Vista and setting up a dev environment.

Currently am working with XP, VS2008, SqlServer2005. This laptop comes with Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit. I have a copy of Vista Ultimate that I would like to install on this Dell.

Q1. Will it be an easy upgrade from Home Premium to Ultimate, or do I need to start clean?

Q2. There is no 32-bit or 64-bit info on the Ultimate packaging. Is that an install time option?

Q3. Is IIS 7.0 pre-installed on Ultimate?

Q4. Will I be up-and-running after installing VS2008 and SQL2005?

Any tips/tweaks/advice for a Vista-newbie that wants a full dev environment on the 1530?

adv-thanks-ance...

Answer 1

You can upgrade directly from Home Premium to Ultimate.

Answer 2

Q1. Yes, easy.

Q2. No.

Q3. Yes.

Q4. Yes, assuming you install everything correctly.

Your choice of hardware really doesn't matter, all things considered. Vista and Visual Studio on a Dell 1530 is pretty much the same as an HP xw6400 workstation. What happens after it's installed is a matter of perspective.

Answer 3

1. I upgraded from Home Premium to Ultimate with no issues whatsoever

2. You have to purchase the specific OS version (32 or 64) specifically. You can't choose at the time of install

3. IIS 7 is on the disk (or upgrade package), and you can choose to install it.

4. I was up and running within 3 hours, service packs included for both VS 2008 and SQL 2005