Taming the emulator...
Our friends over at MSDN have published an informative article about using the emulator witih Smart Device projects. A recommended read for all Compact Framework developers.
One area in particular that they cover is transferring files to the emulator. I know more than one person (yours truly, too) who has a fit of some sort with this. All I can say about this is: read the article to get a handle on the current situation and be patient. If what I saw at MDC will be working as advertised in the forthcoming Ozone SDK, life with the emulator will get exponentially better (thanks for listening, MSFT!). Despite our gripes about the current emulator, it is much better than the old one.
As someone who runs as a non-Administrator [voluntarily], I found the following in the section on emulator installation troubleshooting humorous:
It is unlikely in practice that Visual Studio users do not have Administrator permissions. However, if this is the case, ask a user with Administrator permissions to log on to the development computer and deploy the emulator using either of the two preceding procedures. [colored text inserted by me]
Other than folks here who have made the switch, I do know of some developers in a corporate environment who do not run with Administrator privledges (dictated by policy).
I think that the assumption of Administrator privledges is a bit naive on Microsoft's part. Maybe I'm wrong. Rather than installing at the time of your first deployment, I would think that Visual Studio Setup would install the emulator for you if you have the Smart Device Programmability option selected (hint, hint!) [as one needs Administrator privs to install VS.NET].
-Nino
p.s. For the one person (I know who you are :P) who reads this blog, this is a much shorter entry than it was going to be (less witty as well). I hit the *@#!$ backspace key accidentally and lost my post. Grr! I forgot to follow your sage advice ... I fired up w.bloggar and did it there (the second time) than copied it back here as my Hand-to-Brain interface seems a bit shaky this evening.
Despite my apparant ineptitude with a laptop keyboard using the web interface to the blog, props to Scott for the hard work on ASPNetWebLog..it rocks! Thank you!
[Listening to: You and the Night and the Music - Frank Sinatra - (02:37)]