My friend pinged me today and asked told me they wanted to come to the “dark side” and start programming asp.net. Well I don’t know about the whole “dark side” thing, but I did remember a couple of weeks ago I was talking to Scott Guthrie about how it was such a pain to install SQL server and he recommended this installer package. So I looked into and what a great find it is. The Microsoft Web Platform Installer takes all the components that you need and puts them on the computer in one installer. What a dream actually. I count tell you about all the times I have to go to all the different sites to go and get the software and then do all the installs separately. Here is the other beauty of it. Its all free! I mean it all of it !

Here is a more detailed list of what comes with it

installs Microsoft's entire Web Platform, including IIS, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, SQL Server 2008 Express Edition and the .NET Framework. Using the Web Platform Installer’s user interface, you can choose to install either specific products or the entire Microsoft Web Platform onto your computer. The Web PI also helps keep your products up to date by always offering the latest additions to the Web Platform.

Get It Here

http://www.microsoft.com/web/channel/products/WebPlatformInstaller.aspx

They also have a great tutorial video to walk you through the install process. What a great time savor!