Stefano Demiliani WeBlog

Whidbey Beta: this is not the way to do...

Some friends of mine (MSDN Subscribers) are trying in these days the Whidbey Technical Preview from MSDN, and after some days of trying, I can see that this is not a BETA but an ALPHA in all its function. :(

The first and orrible thing discovered:

If you try to go to the MSDN Help and do a Search, you can see this error:

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Microsoft Document Explorer
The underlying connection was closed: The remote name could not be resolved.

Microsoft Document Explorer
There is already a command handler for the menu command 'e8b06f44-6d01-11d2-aa7d-00c04f990343 : 201'.
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Why this? Because someone of the MS Programmers Team has forgotten an internal machine name (TBOX3) on the code, and on this machine the MSDN Library is trying to search for a Web Service (calling /msdn/service/msdn.asmx).

The funny (and tragic) thing is that the developer has forgotten also the Username and Password (in clear text!!!) on the code.

An other problem is that the Class Viewer is totally unstable (crash continuously).

So? I think that Whidbey will be a future products, and now is not the time for a release... a Beta Release must be more functional, not a collection of bugs. I hope that this "BETA" will be soon replaced with an other release.

My personal advice for all programmers? Read about Whidbey, stay tuned, but now is not the moment for using it...

CORRECTION: As someone pointed me, I've used the word "BETA", but this is not a Beta Release, it's only a Community Technology Preview. Sorry...