Windows Phone 7 Emulator Launch Time versus Notification Services

I’ve got a bit of a dilemma as to which emulator image to work with for Windows Phone 7.  As you are no doubt aware there is a hacked emulator image available that opens up some of the hidden functionality of Windows Phone 7. For example most of the built in applications such as the hubs and Office are available in the hacked build.

Here’s a couple of things you might not know:

– The official build is SLOW and I’m not talking slow whilst running applications (I think this is about the same speed), I’m talking about the boot and time to launch/connect debugger to your application. This is a royal pain and has caused me to go back to the hacked build because it’s so much quicker to debug your application on.

– The hacked build will NOT work with Notification services. If you are seeing any issues with notification services, make sure that you a) use the official build and b) make sure you check your proxy settings. Even if you think your proxy settings won’t make a difference, try turning them off and seeing whether notification services work.

Here’s the dilemma – I want to use notification services in my application but I don’t want to have to wait up to 5 minutes for Visual Studio to launch and debug my application……

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