After much thought and evaluation

After much thought and evaluation I purchased an HP Pavilion zd8000 laptop. I really like this system. It has a very bright 17” screen and a great keyboard. It’s big enough to have a full keyboard with a number pad. It’s also a rotund 9+ lb. I purchased the system at Sam’s Club, my preferred provider … because of their 6 month return policy. I really wanted a new 17” Apple powerbook. The problem is, as a .NET developer its tough to work on a powerbook … Virtual PC is so … V E R Y S L O W. I have big hopes for the upcoming Intel machines. In the interim I’ll just use the HP.

The first thing I did with the new laptop was upgrade the operating system to XP Professional. In spite of this change SQL 2005 Express would not install. It continues to hang at the point of “Searching for IIS …” My search of the internet and Microsoft’s site revealed no information, workaround, or fix. Am I the only one having this problem? My work around was to install Personnel SQL Server 2000. Installing Visual Studio 2005 was a breeze. Just don’t let the installer attempt to install SQL 2005 Express. If you do, it will just hang the system.