'Time bomb' in Microsoft Visual Studio.Net Beta 2

From...

By Tom Sullivan

(IDG) -- Microsoft Corp. sent attendees of its recent TechEd developer conference a notice last week stating that a 'time-bomb' bug has been found in Visual Studio.Net.

The memo, sent by Yuval Neeman, a vice president at Microsoft's developer division, said the bug "will cause the product to expire July 31, 2001."

Microsoft said the time bomb affects only the Visual Studio.Net Beta 2 design-time environment and not any code written from the languages within Beta 2 or any applications customers may have deployed with the tool kit.

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Users will be required to uninstall the version they received at TechEd and reinstall the bug-free version from new CDs. Microsoft said the new CDs will upgrade users to the beta version of Visual Studio .Net Enterprise Architect.

Enterprise Architect, which according to Microsoft doesn't have the time bomb, is the highest end of three Visual Studio.Net editions. The other two are Visual Studio.Net and Visual Studio.Net Enterprise Developer.

Enterprise Architect, introduced in mid-May, is designed to allow lead developers to determine rules and policies that can be implemented using the developer edition to guide programmers in decision-making.

Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, made it clear in a keynote at TechEd that Microsoft's goal is to have Visual Studio.Net completed by year's end.

The memo said developers will receive the new CDs well before July 31.