Friday, October 28, 2005

Visual Studio 2005 RTMs and I can't upgrade my MSDN Subscription

Microsoft finally released Visual Studio 2005. I haven't played with the Betas at all, I just didn't have time to or the hardware for it. I certainly wasn't going to install it on my production laptop, I have to get work done. But now it's RTM, in theory I should be able to install this in production :-). But I can't get the any of the Visual Studio 2005 Team Editions, which is what I really want. You can check out the different editions here. My company bought an MSDN subscription for me earlier this year, so I am eligible to transition from MSDN Universal to MSDN Premium I think, which gets you the Team Edition bits. But you have to logon and set some database flag so MSDN Subscriber downloads shows you Team Edition. I mean how lame is this whole process. Microsoft did you really think anyone would self-nerf their subscription to a lower level or not choose the biggest version of Visual Studio they could get?!?! The mind boggles. Not to mention that the place to set the flag is dependent on how you renewed/bought MSDN. Check out this matrix to hit the correct URL. I THINK mine is the North American Subscription Services but I can't tell because the site has been DOWN for 2 days now, at least since VS2005 RTMed. Now I did try the North American Licensing Services URL, because I actually received an email from Microsoft telling me to logon here and make my choice, but I logon and there is nothing for me to choose. I then have our companies volume license administrator, which might include MSDN, add me as a manager on our companies volume licensing agreement, but my MSDN Subscription is not here. Does MS actually want people to get their development tools? I can right now download the VS2005 Professional Edition because I am listed as an MSDN Universal subscriber if MSDN Subscriber downloads actually responded to download requests, but I wouldn't dare install it, I don't know what it would do to my license keys, you know I might be locked out from installing Visual Studio Uber Edition without giving blood and my first born to MS promising not to steal their development tools.