No doubt, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 is not merely a “tool” for development. It’s rather a powerful environment that includes everything we need for efficient and successful work. Unfortunately, it’s an established fact that the first release of the environment proved to be too raw. There are quite many bugs for a product of that class, and some of them are pretty annoying.

Guys from Microsoft do realize this as well and finally, they decided to relieve us from most of the troubles. Recently they’ve released Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1). They claim in some areas it addresses more than 50% of the bugs reported by users. Good job. I didn’t notice any major fixes though, at least it’s still impossible to work with dynamic help on - too slow as before. However, I’ve just installed SP1 on my machine so hopefully, it will show its worth during the work.

The most noticeable improvements offered by SP1 are:

  • New processor support (e.g., Core Duo) for code generation and profiling
  • Performance and scale improvements in Team Foundation Server
  • Team Foundation Server integration with Excel 2007 and Project 2007
  • Tool support for occasionally connected devices and SQL Server Compact Edition
  • Additional support for project file-based Web applications
  • Windows Embedded 6.0 platform and tools support

You can download SP1 here: