I hit another little snag in my attempt to get through the self-study material for Microsoft’s exam 70-536. I’ve gotten to the section on creating a Windows service, but that only works with Visual Studio Professional, and I’ve only got Standard on both my desktop & laptop. I have a license for VS 2008 Pro, from the Dreamspark account I had last year, when I was taking a class at NYU, but I need to press the ISO to DVD, then do the install (which will hopefully work OK over VS 2008 Std), then re-apply any VS 2008 patches.
This all got me to thinking about VS 2010, and what the status was on that. I haven’t really been bothering to keep up with that lately. Turns out it’s scheduled for release April 12. If I want to buy an upgrade, it looks like it’ll cost $549, based on this page. This article, though, indicates that it might be possible to buy an upgrade for $299. I’ve managed to avoid spending money on Visual Studio so far, getting my licenses through either Dreamspark or at launch events, so we’ll see if I can wrangle a free VS 2010 license one way or another.