Today, around dinner, the mailman arrived with a special package for me. An expensive one, but one that also makes me very happy. It was a big box containing a second box. The second box contained about 8 CD/DVD’s with Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 professional on it. And two with Windows 8, one for 32-bits systems and one for 64-bits systems. Also a DVD with SQL Server 2012 and one with Team Foundation Server 2012 on it. One with Windows 2008 Server and finally one with .NET 4.5 SDK/DDK on it.

Too bad it isn’t weekend yet, because I definitely want to start using it all!

Anyways, I’m now installing Windows 8 on an Asus EEE PC with touchscreen and Windows 7. That promises to become very interesting! I already had a netbook with Windows 8 RT with touchscreen but RT isn’t Windows 8 Professional. I hope the upgrade goes well, since I’m considering to upgrade my desktop system too, if I like Windows 8 well enough. I don’t like the Metro-look, though. But that’s something I’ll have to get used to.

Visual Studio 2012 will allow me to develop Metro-applications. That’s very interesting, but only if Windows 8 will have a reasonable large market-segment. Right now, it’s less popular than Linux on the desktop so that’s a bad start. But things will change. Windows 8 will grow sooner or later. I do wonder if it will be powerful enough to be used as a tablet-system, since the competition with Android and Apple is very tough. The Microsoft App market isn’t very large at this moment either so it’s difficult to get some nice applications for my netbook. My laptop will be able to use older Windows applications so I don’t have a problem there, but the tablet-version is limited in the applications it can support. That’s because it’s build on a different processor than the regular Windows versions.

Included in the box is also a subscriber ID for my MSDN account. That’s important since I can download a lot more free applications and development tools from the Microsoft site. Older Windows versions, older SQL Server versions, even MS Office 95 and Embedded C++ 4.0! Or Visual Basic 6.0 and 2003. Or Visual FoxPro 7, 8 or 9. Or a few Windows XP, XP Embedded, Vista and Windows 7 licences. But I’m more interested in Windows Server 2012, since I also have a web server at home. Do I date to upgrade it? Better try it first in a virtual machine!

Anyway, I’m busy this weekend!