Disgruntled of London

Just been reading the new pricing structure for Visual Studio. OKay. That's not strictly true. I read about it a few days ago, just didn't have a chance to write anything about it.

I'm a bit upset at how the new pricing's worked out. I currently use Visual Basic 2003 Standard Edition. It's got most (as far as I can gather) of the functionality of Visual Studio, with just a couple of things chopped out, like native support for Library projects, support for SQL Server (Only talks in the designer to MSDE) and a few other things that are all easily workable.

The reason I started using VBSE was that, although it's a little limited, it did, at the every least, give me a very VS-like experience - having used VS Pro it gave me few or no surprises.

Unfortunately, if I want to do that this time round, I have to fork out $300 (Not sure what it'll be in GBP) for the same thing. Yes, I know it's not the same thing. It's got more functionality than VBSE (Compact Framework support, native Library support etc.) but still...

The only way (as far as I can tell) to get a similar (although not complete) level of functionality is to get both the VS-Express editions (VB and Web) and work with them. Sadly, from what I can gather, it's just not the same.

Grrr. As long as VS 2006 doesn't come out at the beginning of 2006, I daresay I'll end up buying VS 2005 Standard Edition anyway. guess I'm just a sucker...