Marc Gregoire’s Blog

Here is a list of free eBooks related to Microsoft technologies.

• Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (10 chapters by Patrice Pelland, Pascal Paré, and Ken Haines)
• Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (10 chapters by Ross Mistry and Stacia Misner)
• Petzold’s Programming Windows Phone 7 (1000 pages by Charles Petzold)
• Own Your Future: Update Your Skills with Resources and Career Ideas from Microsoft (8 chapters by Katherine Murray)
• Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions (Second Edition) (6 chapters by Mitch Tulloch)
• First Look Microsoft Office 2010 (14 chapters by Katherine Murray)
• Windows 7 troubleshooting tips (short eBook by Mitch Tulloch)
• Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 (9 chapters by Charlie Russel and Craig Zacker)
• Deploying Windows 7, Essential Guidance (10 chapters from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and 6 TechNet articles)

Enjoy 🙂

Microsoft has released the final version of the Windows Phone 7 developers tools 🙂
The package includes everything you need to start writing applications and games for Windows Phone 7. The package is completely free and includes all of the following:

• Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone – Free edition of VS 2010 for Phone development.
• Express Blend 4 for Windows Phone – Free version of Blend for Windows Phone 7 Development.
• Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 – Rich framework for building great applications for Windows Phone 7.
• XNA Game Studio for Windows Phone 7 – Rich framework that enables you to build great 2D and 3D games for Windows Phone 7.
• Windows Phone Emulator – A hardware accelerated emulator that allows you to run and debug your applications and games without requiring a phone.
• Phone Registration Tool – When you get a device, this allows you to “unlock” the device so you can run/debug your application on it, using your Marketplace account.

Download the tools here.
Read Scott Guthrie’s blog post to get much more details on the release.

Microsoft has just released a refreshed version of the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP. The biggest change is that it is now compatible with the final version of Visual Studio 2010 RTM 🙂

The CTP includes the following components:

• Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP
• Windows Phone Emulator CTP
• Silverlight for Windows Phone CTP
• XNA Game Studio 4.0 CTP

Get it here.

A few days ago, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010. Unfortunately, for the time being, this final version is not compatible with the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP that was released a while ago. According to Charlie Kindel:

“If you install the retail (RTM) release of Visual Studio 2010 on the same machine on which you already have the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP, you will be unable to build your Windows Phone projects.  Further, while the Windows Phone project type will continue to appear in the File/New dialog, you will not be able to build Windows Phone 7 applications.”

The Windows Phone Developer Tools are being updated and a version that supports the final version of Visual Studio 2010 will be released in a few weeks.

In the meantime, Charlie Kindel recommends the following if you need the retail version of Visual Studio 2010 together with the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP:

• Install Visual Studio 2010 to a VPC image
• Install Visual Studio 2010  on another machine

Note that installing the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP to a VPC image is not supported.

Register here to be informed when an updated version of the Windows Phone Developer Tools is released.

It seems Microsoft listened to all the complains about the long name for the new Windows phone. The Microsoft Windows Phone twitter page just had the following message:

“Tis the season for Series finales. We’ve got one too – dropping the ‘Series’ and keeping the ‘Windows Phone 7.’ Done.”

Excellent, “Windows Phone 7” sounds much better without the strange “Series” behind it 🙂