SharePoint Foundation on Windows 7
This, my friends, is the answer. Yesterday, at the Hyatt in Philadelphia, they launched SharePoint 2010 and Visual Studio 2010. Now you guys know me and know how much I like blowing up new gear with new software so the time has come to make good on Microsoft’s promise:
SharePoint Foundation 2010 can also be installed for development purposes on Windows 7
My understanding is that it will work on any 64 bit Windows OS and it says it won’t support a production environment, whatever that means.
So to find out, I’ve loaded up in some new Dell gear. I got the Latitude 6510 that the sales lady was trying to give away. She balked when I said I needed Windows 7 x 64 Professional with 8Gb RAM and it ended up running the price up to about $1500. But it’s sweet and it is going to let me do a couple of important things.
First, I’ve downloaded Windows Virtual PC from here. It’s a little confusing when they talk about Windows VPC and Microsoft VPC and Windows XP mode but, if you select Windows 7 x64 Pro in the first pulldown and English in the second, you’ll get buttons to download either Windows XP Mode or Windows VPC. I didn’t want XP, I wanted VPC so I click it and got the files downloaded and installed.
So I have a Windows Virtual PC program on my start menu. I start it and I get what looks like a Windows folder except that it’s got a Create Virtaul Machine link at the top. I clicked it and got a dialog where I can give the new machine a name and a location for the files. There will be two files, a configuration file and virtual hard drive file. I name mine Jeffrey after the sweet little robot in the Intel ad.
Then it asks how much RAM to give it. Since I have 8Gb to work with, I said 2Gb. That’s cool thing number one I can do with the new Dell. And I leave the network connections options checked.
On the next page, it asks about the hard drive file. I check to create a new one and, on the next page, give it 80Gb. With a 500Gb hard drive; that’s cool thing number 2.
Then, I click Create. This takes a bit but eventually, I land back at the VM folder with my new machine, Jefferey sitting there. It says it’s Powered Down.
I double click on it and it opens up a little command Window and starts to boot giving me a DHCP command with a twirling cursor. Eventually it gets tired of doing that and it tells me:
Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device.
This is where the Launch Event will pay off because they gave us free Windows 7 Enterprise Edition install DVD. Since the VM is connected to my laptop’s DVD player, I insert the DVD and restart the VM. It boots and starts to install the OS.
That’s a start, but it’s weekend and me and Jeffery got a thing going on this weekend so we’ll talk to you on Monday.
-robot
Tags: