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At this point, if I was writing desktop apps, I'd go dual boot, so I could test on W8 without being tied to it day to day.
Christian Graus
Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.
Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
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Yeah... that might be a good option...
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I'd recommend a dual boot as well. You'll want Windows 8 to test on, etc. but I think, once you've played with 8, you would want to go back to Windows 7 for development.
Windows 8 is flaky for me - you'll need to buy (to get a stable one) replacement for the start menu, which still seems stunningly asinine to me, defaults won't work, and I even have to reboot on occasion for things like double clicking stops working and starts performing right clicks instead. No it's not a setting; a reboot fixes it every time.
(and worst of all, my Evoluent vertical mice don't work quite normally either).
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. - George Carlin
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dexterama wrote: Windows 8 is flaky for me
That's what I'm afraid of... and I do have another laptop that was just purchased for Windows 8 testing so I do have that for testing purposes.
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I have recently started using Windows 8 and it took some getting used to. The biggest thing was no traditional start menu. Once you figure out (and get accustomed to it) the 'Modern UI' start screen is actually your start menu but on some serious steroids then it is a none issue.
I'm doing all my dev on it now using Visual Studio 2012 (I also have a WAMP environment set up for occasional PHP stuff) with no issues at all. There was a learning curve for the first few days though, but that's part of the fun IMO.
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DaveyM69 wrote: There was a learning curve for the first few days though, but that's part of the fun IMO.
Hell yeah! 
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I think this question is important enough to be a survey on the CP home page - perhaps with some additions (and taking out your HD related question  ).
There are already a couple of good answers. I wish I was able to add to them, but I will be in the same boat as you pretty soon and I am also interested in hearing what other developers here have to say about their actual experience with doing development on Windows 8.
Actually, I am mostly interested in hearing if there is something you cannot accomplish when developing under Win8, specifically regarding XP targeted development. I will be stuck with that for some time and know there are some pitfalls with the .NET Framework 4.5 as previously posted here (was that by CG and Espen or Pete? I thought I had the posts bookmarked, but I guess not  ).
Soren Madsen
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I agree... it's a good question to get feedback from the whole community from. I'm a bit torn over the decision of which way to go, bleeding edge and risk OS related problems or go for the safe bet with Win7? 
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I don't know about drive swappage, but I'm going Windows 8 on my new dev desktop, and will in all likelihood regale the Lounch with a fair number of regular observations.
The first is the insanely quick start-up. Not timed yet, but on a 3.4GHz i5 with 16GB ram and 125GB SSD, Windows 8 starts in what seems like purely physical boot time. Then, just click the Desktop tile to get back to a more familiar environment.
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The startup time is nice...but I usually don't power off my main dev machine on a regular basis... so don't know if that's a decision maker there.
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Yep, I don't much either. I just noticed it this morning because I was installing everything, which requires a few restarts.
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That's probably what I'll end up doing... thanks a lot for the links and feedback! 
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Albert Holguin wrote: I also was looking for something you could easily place/remove hard drives in
case anyone knows of specific towers that let you do that easily
There are a ton of options available. One of the units that I got a while ago that I quite like for convenience is from Antec:
Antec Bay YouTube review[^]
The advantage of this bay is that you can put any drive in it without needing to swap the drives into different mounting trays so it makes it easy to use multiple different drives in the same bay. The other alternatives normally have some tray you have to first mount the drive to and then slide the tray in - those models are less convenient if you're trying to swap out multiple drives (unless of course you buy multiple trays), but some of those models include additional fans, a handle for the tray for convenience and portability, a nicer "finished" look (so you don't see a drive sticking out of your case; not an issue for my Antec P180 case since it has a door covering all of the front bays), a keylock mechanism, and a tray design that provides some protection to your drive if your travelling with it.
I've used the more traditional removable bay/tray units before and like them, but it really depends on how you plan to use it - that's why I figured I'd pass on info on the Antec unit. Some decent StarTech bays (see model #DRW150SASBK) can be found here[^]
One last tip - be careful to get a unit that supports good cooling. It doesn't need to have a fan as long as it's designed well and with the proper materials. If getting a unit with a fan be prepared to replace it - they often use cheap fans that start to make a lot of noise after a year or so.
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Thanks for the suggestions... VERY helpful! ...thanks!
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I can't speak for anyone else here but in my case 7. I tried Win8 Pro for awhile (after evaluating all the Previews) and couldn't find a single thing about it that enhanced my development environment. Nada. If anything it broke a couple of things I needed.
I won't speak to its viability as a tablet O/S but for a desktop (development system) it offers nothing UNLESS you plan to write for the "Modern" interface.
-CB
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Yeah, not really planning on writing Metro apps any time soon... thanks for you input.
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Albert Holguin wrote: Would you go with Win 7 or 8?
I'd prefer to use whichever was my target platform as the code will be the most stable on the OS it was developed under. I don't have any time on a Win8 box, so all things being equal, I'd opt for Win7, simply because I prefer to stick to tools I already know how to use well.
Albert Holguin wrote: easily place/remove hard drives in case anyone knows of specific towers that let
you do that easily
Get one with USB3 and use a USB3 external drive. Its nearly as fast as SATA. If SATA performance is critical, there's a lot of removeable drive bay options that fit in a standard 5.25" optical bay, some even use enclosures that include USB2 ports on them for use as an external USB2 drive. If I recall, ineo, StarTech, and others make the USB2 kind.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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My target is really all Windows desktops from XP until Windows 8. I do have various test machines though so my real concern is all my development tools working properly and having an environment I can develop in well. Right now my main dev desktop is an XP machine because... well, it just works. It's time for an upgrade though...
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I totally hear you on still using XP, I'm still using it at home too .
Do your customers have a preferred OS, or one they'll be moving to soon? If so, I'd make that my dev OS, otherwise I'd go Win8 for that set of targets. I don't think customers will be very forgiving if a new app doesn't work spectacularily under it, but they might forgive rough spots on older OSs. As for the time, I've always felt time spent getting familiar with my customers' environment to be well spent, so I never really factor it in other than schedule allowances.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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Problem with customers is they all want something different... and they all want it to work perfectly for them. 
...Guess it keeps us well employed... 
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I'm actually running server 2012 on a precision t6700 [^]. Very easy to swap drives with it, they are all ejected through the front of the case. No need to open it, just remove the front cover. Room for 4 drives this way through a full blown power edge raid controller. And since I'm doing a good bit of sharepoint development on a number of different versions, I make a lot of use of hyper-v to vm all the different parts of my dev farms. Works well for me so far!
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I've been programming on Windows 8 Pro for a few weeks now.
After some personalization, I have to say, I love it... (But not using the start screen or any of that metro crap)
Windows 8 is really really good. Fast. Windows is still Windows: you make it what you want, and it just works. Did I mention it's fast??
Visual Studio 2008 starts faster than opening notepad in Windows 7.
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VisualStudio 2008 is still my main dev workhorse... so I'm glad to hear it works well in Win8 
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