TechEd info -AND- VS, BizTalk, SqlServer 2005 launch dates announced

Check out the Press Pass for all the latest from TechEd, which is going on this week. Of most importance, they announced the release dates of Visual Studio 2005 (.NET 2.0), BizTalk 2005 and SqlServer 2005. Look out November!

‘Another’ VS2005 Delay?

I’m a little confused; according to eWeek, Microsoft is delaying the releases of Whidbey and Yukon again; they will be released simultaneously. Hmmm, I thought it was a given that Whidbey would not be out until September (in a previous post of mine). I know Yukon, last I heard, was shipping in July-ish timeframe.

Anyhow, as there are quotes from Microsoft in this article, I would take this as the latest news…ah, remember when it was supposed to ship last year?

VS 2005 Beta 1 Emulator Setup Issue

Just thought I’d drop the hint: I was installing VS.NET 2005 Beta 1 on a new PC today, and hit an error during the Device Emulator install, which occurs after VS.NET is installed (thankfully).  If you get an error essentially saying ‘…Error 1603…Fatal Error during installation…”, the following blog entry will help immensely:

http://blogs.msdn.com/amit_chopra/archive/2004/07/07/175484.aspx

Their proposed ’solution’ worked perfectly.

2005 Go Live approaching!

Wow, talk about me falling behind…Microsoft ‘recently’ announced that Beta 2 of VS 2005 will ship around end of March, and at the same time receive Go Live! licensing.  Go Live! was introduced to assure developers that applications being built with a beta version of software would be production-ready.

In addition, the RC will ship around the September timeframe…for those who have been worried by ‘delays’, I would assume Microsoft is doing all it can to deliver this year, and I wouldn’t expect anymore delays.  They haven’t missed a ‘year-branded’ product release yet…

New Windows Mobile Software Released

Just got my official (public) notification today, had to pass it along!  .NET CF SP3 and ActiveSync 3.8 are now available.

The CF.NET SP3 release notes are found on its page.  ActiveSync’s, though, are not listed there.  I’ve heard the only real changes were:

• Windows XP SP2 security pop up warnings that appear the
  first time a Windows Mobile devices is docked have been eliminated
• Remote PC Sync (via Wifi or LAN) is turned off by default.
  However, users can turn this functionality back on.

So if that’s all, not that critical of an update unless affected by these issues.  Be sure to check any installed readme files, etc. for more info.

App.Config for CF.NET

Once again, eggheadcafe comes through! They show how to add the capability of App.Config/AppSettings to your Compact Framework application. It’s very simple, really, and I’m surprised Microsoft didn’t include this by default. Apparently the AppSettings property has some other skeletons in it that prevented it being ported…