Man! If you're doing C++ then you definitely want to get onto 2012/2013 ASAP, the improvements in tooling are amazing. "Navigate to.." alone is worth it.
VS 2008 is the last one capable to compile the C++ to produce the binaries that can run on Windows 2000. Believe or not, I actually need that. That prevents me to use any C++ language changes introduced after VS 2008.
The frustrating part is that MS actually removed the existing code from the already existing libraries (but which are not binary interchangeable between the compiler versions) in order to disable the support for Windows 2000. Otherwise I'd be able to use even VS 2013. They did the same for XP with VS 2012, but more people made the fuss so now even VS 2013 should support XP, AFAIK.
That's "MSDN Magazine Camp". MSDN Magazine was a rag of a publication that was mostly just advertisements for 3rd party tools than it was anything interesting about programming. MSDN is the Microsoft Developer's Network, which houses basically all of their documentation, tutorials, articles, and support for developers.
Wow, a long article but still relevant. As I was reading this I realised how closely it matches even the latest metro ui fiasco (for developers). Indeed "MSDN Camp" has won. Thanks for the link!
The frustrating part is that MS actually removed the existing code from the already existing libraries (but which are not binary interchangeable between the compiler versions) in order to disable the support for Windows 2000. Otherwise I'd be able to use even VS 2013. They did the same for XP with VS 2012, but more people made the fuss so now even VS 2013 should support XP, AFAIK.