Well, I came from VC 6.0, and I found that VS 2003 wasn't too bad, but VS 2005, on a 2 Gig dual proc Dell laptop runs like crap. I get frequent pauses and delay

Well, I came from VC 6.0, and I found that VS 2003 wasn't too bad, but VS 2005, on a 2 Gig dual proc Dell laptop runs like crap. I get frequent pauses and delays while typing, and it just breaks your flow. (to be fair NB can sometimes do this too) However, the worst aspect for me with VS2005 is the brain dead UI. Example 1. Pop-up tabs next to the scroll bars. Nuts. Example 2. The remove the output window by hitting escape that was in VC6.0 is gone. Nuts. Example 3: Horribly slow output window and constant unnecessary redraws. See next para. Try this and let me know if it works. Run any app over remote desktop, like Word, Outlook etc, then try running VS. At least on my setup, RDP is great over broadband running almost anything, but when I run VS, I get bizarre slow bottom to top refreshes about every 5 seconds, or when I type. This makes it almost unusable unless you look away from the screen when typing. I used to do quite a lot of development on a server box running VS, rather than run it locally and have to go to Oracle over a VPN connection. This is now almost unbearable. To be fair, I think .NET is at least decent, and C# is a friendly enough language, with delegates and some nice things in 3.0. (and really nice in 3.5!), but development of anything outside the MS ecosystem is like living in a vandalized neighborhood. e.g. Most cool stuff is broken on Windows. I shouldn't disparage Windows. I think the kernel is decent. I know how to program GUIs. XP has always been rock solid for me. But ... Windows has been left behind by most of the fun stuff, and it's just irrelevant to most interesting development outside of a corporate environment.