New purchase of fortran compiler

[cstiff]

I am investigating fortran compilers for my company. I have narrowed the choice between Intel 9.1 standard edition and Lahey LF 7.1. If I purchase Intel then I am faced with the question of choosing and installing one of theMicrosoft development products. Can somebody please give me a quick tutorial of the attributes, advantages, and disadvantages of my four choices? I notice that Visual Studio 2005 Express edition is free but version 9.1 can only operate in command line mode...and that Visual Studio 5 is $299... and I have no idea about the other two choices. How can I justify to my boss to spend $299 for just the gui interface? Are there other attributes to Studio 5 to justify its purchase?

Thanks for any assistance you can offer.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition has everything you would need to enable Fortran development along with the Intel compiler, plus you would get additional language processors such as Visual C++, Visual Basic, C# and others. The higher editions of Visual Studio do not add value for Fortran programmers. If you contemplated doing any mixed-language development, particularly with C or C++, then VS2005 Standard would provide that benefit.

Unless things have changed, and their web site does not suggest it has, Lahey Fortran does not support VS 2005, and Microsoft does not support anything earlier than VS 2005 on Windows Vista.

Please send me an email at steve.lionel at intel.com so that I can provide some more information that will be of interest to you.

[garylscott1]

Lahey has indicated that they are working on an update for current compilers to support VS 2005/Vista. They have not announced a release date.