One of the things I thought I’d get to this weekend is to upgrade my laptop to Vista again.  It is a pretty easy background task and with Norton Ghost is quickly reversable if need be (as it was the last time I tried).

Unlike some (e.g., J. LeRoy who thinks XP is adequate), I really want the new UX and (the promise of) faster power state transitions, among other things. 

But, before the installation I need to be sure of two things:

1. Support for the VPN at Digipede (and the networking software required on my laptop).  This is no longer reported as incompatibile in the Vista Upgrade Advisor.  So, this is worth a shot anyway.
2. Support for Visual Studio 2005 (not to mention 2003 which I still use occasionaly).  I looked into this more today and while Vista may support VS2005, it won’t support the coming SP1.  I really want the fixes in SP1 so I have to choose between sticking with XP or sticking with the pre-SP1 VS2005.  A blocker.

Of course, Visual Studio 2005 SP1 trumps Vista, but I’m not happy about it. 

J. LeRoy (AKA, Cousin Jim) recently posted on What Color is your Vista? with a terrific quote:

So when Microsoft says that they “deliver the right balance”, that’s not your balance they are talking about.

Exactly (and I know I’m taking his point completely out of context).