Where to get a VS 2005 Pro eval version?

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Happy New Year all – looks like this is my first blog post in 2009, so take this as an indication that I’m alive. Will start posting things regularly again, promised :-)

My colleague Olivier over in Redmond points out a potential problem that those may face who want to try out Windows Embedded CE 6.0: you need a copy of Visual Studio 2005 (at least an eval version) in order to run the CE 6.0 Platform Builder tool. Now, the problem here is that MS has discontinued the availability of VS 2005 trial versions some time ago. And no, Platform Builder does not work with VS 2008, sadly.

Fortunately though, you can still get an ISO image of VS 2005 Pro trial version (English) on this page, it’s this link. Prepare for a large download (2.73 GB) which might be a bit slow, too.

Alternatively, you could of course order a Trial DVD kit from your favorite Windows Embedded distributor.

Happy evaluating, then! :-)