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Now that Microsoft has released VS 2010 I went to the product page here. To my amazement I found out that IntelliTrace(Historical Debugger) is supported only on the Ultimate Edition of VS 2010. This mean that you have to spend almost $4000 for renewal and almost $12000 for a new license. Does someone have any idea how can we change this decision? Especially make them add this feature to VS 2010 Professional Edition.

Ikaso
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    There have to be some useful features in Ultimate that make it worth buying over lower editions - otherwise, why would anyone bother? – Pavel Minaev Apr 19 '10 at 08:58
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    There are good features in the Ultimate Edition. I don't use them and do not expect to use them. On the contrary, the historical debugger is a very important feature to all editions. I think that maybe this feature was related to other features in the Ultimate edition and was tightly coupled with them. Otherwise, I don't see a reason not to include it in the cheaper editions, except making you pay a lot of money. – Ikaso Apr 19 '10 at 09:50
  • Btw, you can get Ultimate for free, legally, through their free "BizSpark" (for small businesses), and "DreamSpark" (for students) MSDN subscriptions. – BrainSlugs83 Jun 11 '13 at 05:28
  • I posted a related question here: [How possibly did IntelliTrace become available on my Visual Studio Professional installation?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/25537040/450913) – orad Aug 27 '14 at 23:30

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This is of course fundamentally a question to Product Management at Microsoft. They will have profiles of the intended market segments they're targetting. Willingness ot part with cash is one of those things, yes. But on the linked page, there's a small 2 line blurb that's also telling. The cheaper editions are expected to be used by individuals on small projects, the more expensive by teams on larger projects. Therefore many of the distinguishing features support those larger projects.

So, to answer the title question, you need to explain to MS Product Management that IntelliTrace is not a reason for you to choose VS 2010 Ultimate Edition, but it would be a reason for you to upgrade from 2005/2008 to VS 2010 Professional Edition. Since Vista, MS Product Management certainly understands version skipping, so this can be a convincing argument.

MSalters
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    That's a good direction. How can I contact the Product Management at Microsoft? – Ikaso Apr 19 '10 at 09:50
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    You want specifically the PMs that manage Visual Studio. They'll obviously be around on PDC's etcetera. Yes, I'm suggesting that you should convince them in person. That makes your argument stronger. – MSalters Apr 19 '10 at 11:06
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While I would love to have both static analysis of code contracts, intellitrace, and the new sequence diagram stuff built into Premium and Ultimate, I understand that there are multiple SKUs for different prices.

I don't think there is much we can do to change this at this point, so expect to either live with the missing features, or live with the missing money.

Lasse V. Karlsen
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If you want to use superior stuff, you are expected to shell out some cash.

Axarydax
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    I don't agree with you. I don't need all the other stuff in the Ultimate Edition. The professional addition is enough for me. They could provide a licensing mechanism per this feature and I would be able to use it with the professional edition. I am sure that there are others like me. – Ikaso Apr 19 '10 at 08:59
  • Ikaso, then go and use PHP ;-) – Piotr Rochala Apr 19 '10 at 09:14
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    @rochal: So all the developers that work the professional edition should move to PHP? I wish I could down vote on comments... – Ikaso Apr 19 '10 at 09:18
  • If you want to build a house you must *buy* bricks. As simple as that. – Piotr Rochala Apr 19 '10 at 14:18
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More Features= More Money. And this is universal principal.

Besides you can always look for add-ons which have similar functionality and which cost less than the Ultimate Edition.

Elister
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IntelliTrace is the killer feature of VS2010 (for some, at least), so Microsoft marketing is simply trying to get a high ROI specifically on this feature by getting people to convert.

Dmitri Nesteruk
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Although Intellitrace qualifies as a premium feature, there are lots of other features both in Visual Studio and other Microsoft products that at one time were treated as "premium". Eventually, adoption-through-the-grassroots prevailed and those features became part of lower-priced product editions.

Here are two distinctly different approaches to making the case:

  1. Microsoft stands to make more money via grassroots-adoption - its traditional strength - than by premium editions that are way outside the budgets of most developers and organizations.

  2. If Intellitrace were to be packaged separately (for a price), it would be considerably more affordable. It would be very difficult for Microsoft to claim that it couldn't do this because it has already unbundled Internet Explorer - a considerably more difficult challenge. Unbundling Intellitrace and selling it separately would basically result in a windfall for Microsoft. They'd sell fewer copies of VS Ultimate, but they'd more than make up for that in Intellitrace sales.

Josh Korn
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As with any product with 'premium' packages, some features will need to be kept for those willing to pay the price.

Much as I'd love to start a revolution I can't see this one moving. Maybe in future versions this feature will filter down.

David Neale
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