WPF: Expression Studio 4 Ultimate and VS V10

Question

I want to thank those who have helped coax me over the line to WPF instead of Forms programming. I really appreciate the help I've received here.
Now, before I spend my limited funds on Expression Studio 4 Ultimate, are there any alternatives that are "Better " for WPF development than Expression Studio 4 Ultimate?
I can get ES4U for a good price, but I'm wondering if there is a better application out there, even for a little more money that will do a better job.
Note: I am currently using Visual Studio V8 Pro... Is there really any advantage to upgrading to V10 Pro or would you just stick with V8?
Thanks in advance for everyone's feedback and I really hope I can be of help to others sometime in the future like I've received here.

Mahesh Chand · Answer

A couple of free IDEs are SharpDevelop and MonoDevelop.

Dennis Triplett · Answer

Too funny Sam... Yeah I mean VS2008 and VS2010. I don't drink V8 anymore since it has so much salt. ;o) I currently own VS 2008 and I am going to upgrade to VS2010 since it has better support for WPF and after my duty is to keep the economy going right??? I did some research into Visual Studio V10 to see if I wanted to upgrade and here is what I found... Note: Most here probably already know this but those like myself here it is... ---- Just thought I would make this information available to those who do not know what the changes or differences are between VS 2008 and VS 2010 of Visual Studio... Here is a list of what's new in VS 2010: http://codesmartnothard.com/InstallShieldLimitedEditionForVisualStudio2010Walkthrough.aspx Here is a biggie for me... In VS 2010 they now have a better deployment offering: InstallShield 2010 Limited Edition.. Here is a walk-through of the software: http://codesmartnothard.com/InstallShieldLimitedEditionForVisualStudio2010Walkthrough.aspx Thanks for the feedback and I hope this helps others

Sam Hobbs · Answer

I haved heard of V8 but not V10. V8 is a vegetable drink with juices of 8 vegetables. I drank a lot of it when I was young until my stomach got sick form too much acid. What is V10 like? Or do you mean Visual Studio 2010? If that is what you meant then most of the time we say VS 2010 insterad of V10. I agree with Mahesh that Visual Studio is probably all you need. There is so much to learn and Visual Studio is all you need for most projects. You can learn Expression Studio later but unless it is a necessity for what you are doing it is better to spend your time learning other things in the beginning. Using the Express version of VS will help a lot for anyone that wants to get started; you can always upgade later to a paid version of VS. There are also some other IDEs that work a lot like VS that you can use for free to get started.

Dennis Triplett · Answer

Thanks again Mahesh you've been a big help. I can get a Academic version of V10 Pro for a pretty good price so I think I will jump on it. From what I've gleaned the Designer Interface of V10 was written in WPF and I did notice after some research that V10 does have better support for WPF... So I guess I will be that much poorer in March. :o) Thanks again

Mahesh Chand · Answer

Expression Studio is for design purposes only. If you are planning to design great user interfaces. But if you do not need GREAT screens and just need good Windows you can get away with Visual Studio. I would highly recommend Visual Studio 2010. But you can use Express version to do pretty much anything. Also before you buy Expression Studio you can download a trial version to test it out and see if you really need it. But Vs 2010 has better WPF support that VS 2008 and has better designer. Good luck!