Cleaning the Output window
I like a clean output window when I'm building in Visual Studio; I fix warnings so that all I see in the window is a bunch of "0 errors, 0 warnings".
So Visual Studio 2005 gave me some work to do.
Although I've been using 2005 for a month or so for building a 2.0 version of the Community Server MSI, I've only just started using it on a new project that I'm updating from ASP.NET 1.1 to 2.0. Real code, if you like.
Being 6-12 months behind everyone else makes it very easy to find the answers I need on Google though 
For example, I wanted the Output window to show when I build: Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > General > Show Output window when build starts.
But I hate the fact that we now see huge 10-20 line csc.exe command lines in the Output window. Luckily there's an answer, but you have to be able to trust the build is working correctly because the answer is to remove a lot of the build output: Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > Build and Run > MSBuild project build output verbosity = Quiet.
Quiet is blissful. It shows errors, warnings and nothing else. So by the time you've fixed up all those 1.1 to 2.0 quirks you end up with a very clean Output screen.
In fact, the output from my eight cleaned up projects fits into the Output window without a scroll bar. 
