Edit

The thing is, that M$ know the order to (un/)install the packages because they list them(see article above) AND they are in the tool that they provide – so why not make them part of the whole?

I’ve recently done a VS studio course. There is lots the same vis-a-vis 2005-8. A whole area of ASP has moved on and is better, as is ADO. The way that connections are made and hooked into with the GUI is markedly better as well.
Some bits (I can’t remember which, but they are part of some package setups for distros) are a bit more fiddly to do according to the old hands. What was a two-click job is now a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between different screens. However, since I’d never done any previously, I didn’t pay attention, hence my lack of remembrance. If I went through the books I could find it in 30mins or so. Basically, I just want to know how it works for me now, not in the old version which I’ll never use again…)

Minor things like that don’t count when the whole package is so much slicker. It helps when someone else pays for it, too!! If I’d bought 2005, I’d stick with it and learn it inside out. The next VS version is out soon with (hopefully) lots of the bugs sorted. I’d wait for that, because if you can make 2005 work for you, then that’s all that counts, really. If you are using the latest framework, it’ll pick up the newest runtimes from that. The rest is just little eases for the designer and doesn’t affect any products you make visually. A database connection is a database connection. Once you know how it works, you can do it time and again. 2008 just takes away a few clicks, IMHO, on that score.

http://astebner.sts.winisp.net/Tools/ttool.zip is the tool I used to clean it up.
How does VS2008 compare with VS2005? Is it worth an upgrade?