Before Getting Started | C Primer Plus (5th Edition)

Before we begin this discussion, we need to go through a couple of important practicalities to ready your computer for running the C# programs. You need to do the following:

Check that your computer fulfills the requirements stated for the .NET platform.
Software requirements for .NET SDK At the time of this writing, you can run the .NET SDK with one of the following operating systems: Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft Windows Millenium Edition, or Microsoft Windows 98. You also need Internet Explorer 5.01 and Data Access Components 2.6 installed on your computer.
Minimum hardware requirements Your computer must at least have a Pentium class processor running at 133 MHz, 128 MB RAM, and 900MB of free disk space. Your screen should have a resolution of minimum 800x600 with 256 colors.

At this moment, due to .NET's instability (it is still only a beta release), Microsoft only recommends the installation of .NET on a non-production computer, which simply means a computer that is not used for any critical tasks.

Note

Some of the requirements I have mentioned are likely to change. Please check with Microsoft's Web sites, http://www.microsoft.com and http://msdn.microsoft.com, for the latest facts on these issues.

Install the .NET platform on your computer You can either download the .NET SDK on http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads or order it on a CD-ROM from Microsoft. To install the .NET SDK, you need to follow the instructions of the included installation program. The details of this procedure are likely to change and so they are not discussed here. However, by following the instructions exactly as given by the installation program and accompanying Help files, such as readme.txt and readme.1st, the process should be easy and trouble free.