The MSDN Library CDs

Apart from its premium MSDN more or less universal subscriptions Microsoft supplies you with two cheapo versions of the MSDN: Their internet site and the MSDN Library CDs which contain the complete portfolio of documentation you will ever require writing your Cockpit/Xbase++ programs. The MSDN Library CDs come with Visual Studio but they can also be bought separately for a few bucks. And they are a steal considered what you find on them: The Platform SDK documentation (That's what you will be using most of the time), other SDK documentation, books, partial books, articles from periodicals, ...

I owned two versions of the Library CDs:

1. MSDN Library, Visual Studio 6.0 release

It covers the ground from Windows NT 3.51 / Windows 95 up to Windows NT 4 and Windows 98. Many functions of Windows 2000 are already documented but tagged as preliminary.

It does not only contain function descriptions, it contains complete books like "Programming the Windows 95 User Interface" by Nancy Winnik Cluts or "Inside Ole, 2nd. Edition" by Kraig Brockschmidt which is still considered the COM/OLE/ActiveX bible nowadays.

This CD is a full-time guest in my notebook's CD drive. All the information I need for the development of Cockpit or applications based on Cockpit can be found on this CD. The advantage of sticking with this old version of MSDN is that you can rely on all the functions you find in it to be available on most of the PCs your applications will be installed on.

2. MSDN Library, October 2001 release:

It covers the ground including Windows 2000. Unfortunately it comes with 3 CDs and browsing through it turns you into a disk jockey. Attempts to create a DVD containing all CDs failed so far and I don't have ample space on the hard disk left to simply copy the files over.

Some of the articles/articles featured on the VS 6.0 release have been dropped and some newer stuff was added. Unfortunately the two books mentioned have been dropped and now there are only some chapters from more recent books included on the CD.

The MSDN Subscription

In November 2004 things got better and a lot more expensive: I decided to get an MSDN Professional Subscription. Now I have access to all current documentation in the form of a DVD in my notebook's drive.