AVR Studio 5: Where have I been?

I think I've been down in the design hole too long because I'm not sure how I missed that Atmel updated AVR Studio to version 5. I know what you open sourcerers are saying: "You should be using Linux or have built your own computer and your own OS by now. IDEs are for weak simpletons. The compiler is all you need." (I'm looking at you Todd Bailey.) There are a couple of mitigating facts here. One, I'm lazy. An IDE like AVR Studio provides an organized environment where everything is easy to find. I don't have to build makefiles and the sort. For the lazy and beginners, this is a boon, hiding away some of the less than obvious aspects of embedded programming. Two, I travelled from hardwareland to softwareland and not the other way around. I taught myself how to code after becoming an analog hardware engineer. I wasn't raised on a steady diet of kit PCs as a kid. I run Windows on my Macbook to run all my engineering software and it works. Maybe one day I'll get into Linux for fun and to improve my street cred. Anyways, what's to like about AVR Studio 5?

1. Integrated GNU C Compiler

Sweet! It's not really that big of a hassle to download the compiler and install it. But remember, I'm lazy, so I like saving effort. Like Studio 4, compliation is easy and fast.

2.Improved Editor

The integration of AVR with Microsoft jazz makes coding easier, faster, and less prone to typing errors. For me, this is a nice speed improvement. It remembers all my variables and enumerated types and it makes appropriate suggestions as I code. So long spelling mistakes! With the suggestions, I don't have to copy an enumerated type declaration from one place to another to use it. It provides me with a list, and I pick one. Nice.

The improved editor is the biggest deal. Other than that, they say debugging is better but I don't use it for that. I never sprung for a in-circuit emulator. I have used the built-in simulator on occasion when I'm really stuck or calculating some math that my tired brain can't handle, but I'd say I'm a pretty basic user. There are some pre-built "solutions" for using communication protocols. I've never had a problem coding them myself and at least that way I'm 100% certain about what it's doing.

What about you? How do you prefer to do your embedded development?