Congratulations! You Have Won a Copy of CodeRush with RefactorPro!

I recently won a raffle at the .NETDA .NET Developers Association. Good for me! Point is, I have been wondering about the product for some time, so I'm happy to have the opportunity to check it out. And perhaps I can provide some useful feedback for others about this product.

The first mystery, once you have purchased or decided to evaulate the product, is to determine which of several files you need to download. For me, all I needed was the "IDE Tools" download. I noted that there was a beta version to match up with Visual Studio 2010 RC, so I also downloaded that one.

Wanting to get on with my constant struggle to maintain a precariously balanced position on the bleeding edge, I started with the 2010 version. Unfortunately, I immediately hit the following roadblock:

Idetools-10 MS Document Explorer hasn't been found on this machine. Installation of the help will be skipped.

Now, "skipping help" is not normally my first choice when I am trying to learn something new, so I decided to solve the problem inline. A quick web search convinced me that this message had a couple of million causes, and that the cause of my getting it was (perpetually) going to be on the next page of results... Eventually I found a post that stated that Visual Studio 2010 has an entirely new help system, and no longer uses the Microsoft Document Explorer.

The quick fix, which I found on my own, was to install only that component from Video Studio 2008. Here is my recipe for that:

Mount your Visual Studio 2008 Installation media and open or explore (rather than auto-play) the media. Navigate to "WCU\DExplore". Right-Click on "DExplore.exe" and select "Run as Administrator." After that installation is complete, install the IDETools product.

After the installation was complete, I brought up Visual Studio 2010 product and confirmed that I had a bunch of new glyphs showing up in my code window. Great! Now what?

Well, there was a new "DevExpress" menu, and a "Training Videos..." submenu that took me to a collection of training videos on the DevExpress web site. The only beef I have with this offering is that it is haphazard - there is no "Getting Started with CodeRush with RefactorPro" video series - and there should be. That said, the videos there are useful.

But, don't start there, start Here. David O’Hara has a video that begins to fill this need. But I have to say, I never really found that a soup to nuts "getting started" video series, so I ended up back on the DevExpress Features page reading text. That's so 20th century!

UPDATE
I found a sweet spot to get videos:
Refactoring
Searching for "CodeRush", on the other hand, gets you a more random group of videos. I still think they are missing the boat by not having a "Getting Started" series.