Can developing apps for the windows phone 7 be done without windows 7? Some of the tools in the developer site gave a needs windows 7 error.

The emulator requires DirectX 10 with a WDDM driver, neither of which exist in XP.

From what I know you could bypass and install the dev toolkit but you can't really do any debugging or testing your app, so I don't know if it's worth it.

Apparently, in order to install it on XP you need to:
Download the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP Refresh
Extract the contents of the setup package by running vm_web.exe /x and choosing a path to extract to
Go to the folder you extracted to in step 2 and open the file baseline.dat in notepad
Look for the section named [gencomp7788]
Change the value InstallOnLHS from 1 to 0
Change the value InstallOnWinXP from 1 to 0
Save and close baseline.dat
Run setup.exe /web from the folder you extracted to in step 2

My only suggestion would be to see if Mono supports the IDE, but my guess is you'll need Win 7.

It's a nice dream, but I'm afraid it will need to get pretty chilly in hell before MS give their prize new platform to the community.

EDIT: though I assume Vista will work. it has DX10, and is still supported.

Yes, Vista+ should work.

The March update is being released this week. Updated the first post. ;)

You mean the March update is being released for unbranded & unlocked devices this week.

Supposedly Rogers in Canada is saying they will possibly start staggered updates at the end of the month on a 4-week schedule and for those of us in the US, AT&T hasn't said a damn thing though the rumor is AT&T might eventually get around to starting staggered updates in mid-April.

Love the phone, absolutely disgusted by Microsoft's non-handling of updates. Carrier should have no say on when WP7 gets updated as the update isn't being done over-the-air, but requires a connection to Zune software.

After Microsoft's huge 'We aren't going to have Android's fragmentation" marketing blitz, what are we seeing? Looks a whole lot like Android's fragmentation.

^ not much of a fragmentation really. A carrier can block only one update. Meaning if a carrier blocked the small pre-NoDo update, the carrier cannot block the NoDo update.

I agree though, it would have been the best if carriers weren't allowed to block any updates.

That's true, but two things it doesn't take in to account:

A. Since we only know of one more update this year (or possibly early next year) with the 'Mango' update.....That means you potentially have a substantial period of time with disparity between WP7 features on various devices.

And B, it exacerbated by the Microsoft allowing carriers to rollout the updates at their convenience/on their own schedule.


There was an article not too long ago by Cnet or ZDNET or one of them titled along the lines of "the Carriers aren't your customers".

I just get the feeling Microsoft hasn't grasped that point yet.

It's a shame too, because as I said, I absolutely love WP7 and coming from someone who has a Focus which has been at the center of the update debacle, that's saying a lot. It's a great experience, the Zune software is some of the most beautiful I've ever seen both in interface and functionality, but....Microsoft has to get the update issue under control.

Agreed, even though I personally am not affected by update blockings. Open market (contact-free, or whatever is called) here.

Finally got the update! The whole phone's much faster now!

For those that don't want to wait for carrier approval, check this:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1012189

New update is out:

Fix for fraudulent third-party digital certificates. This update includes a critical fix to an industry-wide issue with nine untrusted digital certificates that were issued by one root certificate authority. These third-party digital certificates are used to access popular websites and email portals. Although this is not a Microsoft security vulnerability, these untrusted certificates may be used to spoof content, perform phishing attacks, or perform man-in-the-middle attacks against all web browser users. This update moves the affected certificates to the "Untrusted Publishers" certificate store on Windows Phone, which helps ensure that these fraudulent certificates are not inadvertently used.

-- Even though it said 25 minutes, my updating was done in around 5.