I have had a very pleasant experience with this tool -- so far. On the plus side:

-- Microsoft has simplified the installation and setup. The Windows SDK headers and libraries are included with the C++ compiler, so there is only one download, and no configuration is required to get up and running to build native Windows applications such as Csound.

-- The compiler seems to produce faster code. It used to be that MinGW 3.4.2 was faster than Visual C++ 2005. Now Visual C++ 2008 seems faster than MinGW 3.4.2. I would still like to know about the pre-release MinGW 4.1.

-- The editor is good and can save files with Unix line endings.

-- The debugger, of course, is just the best.

-- The compiler can compile in more than one thread at a time, to speed up builds (/MP option), if you have a multi-core machine. This actually does speed builds up noticeably.

-- The compiler tunes for Intel Core CPUs (such as I have).

On the down side:

-- Windows NT, 98, and 95 are no longer supported.

-- The Windows SDK in the Express Edition comes with fewer helpful tools, but these can still be downloaded separately. For that matter, you can download the Platform SDK 2003 R2 from 2006 and get a whole lot of free stuff.

-- The excellent ATL and WTL and the usable and standard MFC are not visible, but there are good open source alternatives such as FLTK and wxWidgets.

I would recommend MSVC 2008 Express Edition over MinGW/MSys for somebody just getting started with C++ programming aimed mainly at Windows. If you don't need IDE GUI designers or MFC, MSVC 2008 Express Edition looks entirely usable for professional programming.

All in all, nice. 

Regards,
Mike






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But the compiler and linker still produce binaries that will run on 
those version of Windows, right?  Isn't the limitation just that MSVC 
itself is no longer supported in those environments?

- Dave

Michael Gogins wrote:
> On the down side:
> 
> -- Windows NT, 98, and 95 are no longer supported.



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I just dloaded an installer for MSVC++ (it was only a couple of meg, which
surprised me, I hope it's not going to be looking for an internet connection
to complete the installation, my Csound PC doesn't have one...)

Anyway it aborted the installation saying i needed service pack 2! to
continue...

Just thought i'd bring this up as 1) makes me slightly nervous about my
chances with the MSVC based 5.08 binary installation 2) it's a massive pain
- i'll hassle a friend maybe to try & dload Service Pack 2 for me - is that
painless enough to install without loss of existing data / installations
etc? It's not like a whole OS upgrade procedure is it?



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