I am very comfortable with VSS and I would like to use a free version control at home for my small projects. I just downloaded TortoiseSVN and to me it is not very intuitive. I dont have to read long manuals. I just would like to download and be up and running. What do you recommend?
I tried to download SourceGear Vault but it will not install because I dont have greater than IIS5.0 installed. I am using vista home premimun edition and only have VS express installed.
Please help..
Stick with Subversion, but read the Subversion red book (free online). You don't need to read very much of it - but you'll understand it better the more you use, of course.
Subversion is so much nicer than VSS... you'll be glad you switched. Of course there are plenty of alternatives (Git, Mercurial etc) but I think Subversion is easier to get started with - particularly with Tortoise and the Visual Studio plugins. (Admittedly with only the Express edition of Visual Studio you won't be able to use the plugins...)
I was going to recommend TortoiseSVN, and then SourceGear. I don't think there is anything easier.
The link is to a good article for setting up version control using Subversion on your Vista computer.
TortoiseSVN just converts your windows explorer into an SVN extension. You can create folders in your disk drive that directly correspond to a folder in the repository. Once you get used to it its not that hard. My team of newbies started using it within a week of getting it so I think youll pick it up no problem. You just create a folder in windows, right click it then create repository, and enter in your path. You can then directly update, commit, etc....
Or maybe if you use eclipse you can get SubClipse. It is a plugin that connects your Eclipse workspace to a SVN repository. (real user friendly)