Visual Studio VSTO or Professional dilemma

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leo@junquera.com - 10 Apr 2006 17:18 GMT

I'm having a little trouble figuring this out. I just want to make
sure I have it clear. I want to purchase Visual Studio Professional
because a majority of my development is not office related. However I
have been doing some office development and would like to take
advantage of VSTO. The only way for me to get VSTO is by purchasing
Visual Studio - Visual Studio Tools for Office or getting MSDN
premium. The first option is not good for me because as previously
stated most of my development is not office related. The second option
costs about 2K. This would quadruple my costs (upgrade of visual
studio professional costs $500 or so). I understand MSDN give you a
bunch of extra features but I'm not really looking to take advantage
of them right now. I guess the third option is to buy VS pro upgrade
and VSTO ($1,200) but that seems a little silly.

I am interested in 2005 development and will need to upgrade soon but I
have been pushing off this decision for a while now because of this
issue. I probably will get VS - Pro and continue doing office
development the way I am currently. I guess the whole thing did not
make much sense to me. I would purchase an VSTO addin for my VS Pro if
they offered it. I have Office pro and will have VS pro, why not make
it easy for me to develop office applications and encourage their use?
It all seems very un-Microsoft to me.

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Harry Miller [MSFT] - 10 Apr 2006 18:13 GMT

Do you have a vendor that you work with for these purchases? I have heard
that there is a price break for VSTO if you buy VS Pro, but I can't find any
details about it on the Web. Maybe a vendor would know about it.

Also, you might know from your research, but you get a full development
environment when you buy VSTO 2005. I think the main differences between the
VSTO dev environment and VS Pro is that VSTO supports only C# and Visual
Basic development (no C++ for example) and it does not provide mobile device
support. A feature comparison chart is here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/products/compare/

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Harry Miller
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

> I'm having a little trouble figuring this out. I just want to make
> sure I have it clear. I want to purchase Visual Studio Professional
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
> it easy for me to develop office applications and encourage their use?
> It all seems very un-Microsoft to me.

Reply to this Message

leo@junquera.com - 10 Apr 2006 19:02 GMT

I tried to use Microsoft chat but they just gave me number when it
seemed clear I might know more then they do. I called and spoke to
pre-sales who had to do their own searching. Eventually that's how we
came to the MSDN answer. She called MSDN directly. They said you can
get VSTO with a premium MSDN membership. A premium MSDN membership
qualifies you for volume licensing. I don't have a vender. I'm just a
consultant who is looking to upgrade to vs2005 and hopefully VSTO.

You are right about the difference. It seems very slight. I guess I
have to make a choice: office development or mobile device support.
This is why I am confused. In order to get both I need to go to buy a
"membership" to something that costs more then the product I'm looking
to buy. And I need to jump through hoops just to get the information I
need to make the proper buying decision. And because of this I have
delayed my decision. Wouldn't it be easier to charge me a little
extra for adding VSTO to my VS Pro?

I guess if MS gets 1 extra person to buy a MSDN subscription it is
worth 10 of those like me who won't.

Is there anybody who can clarify why it is being sold in this manner?

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Richard Hogan - 11 Apr 2006 15:39 GMT

Hi Leo

I am not sure if this helps, but if you register as a Microsoft Partner (the
entry level registration is free), you then have the option to register for
something called "Microsoft Empower for Independent Software Vendors", this I
believe would give you the option to get VS.NET and VSTO, plus other internal
use software for a much reduced fee (£260 sterling),

The hyperlink below is for uk based partners and I don't know whether this
is offered for other countries, but it might be worth a look:-)

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/partnering/isv/default.aspx?page=empower

Cheers

Richard

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weisberg39@yahoo.com - 19 Apr 2006 00:06 GMT

This was very confusing. We purchased Visual Studio 2005 Professional
with MSDN subscription. Included with our MSDN disks is a VSTO 2
installation disk, so now we can develop VSTO solutions along with all
sorts of other things.

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Visual Studio VSTO or Professional dilemma

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