I've been struggling to get the prerequisites correct for some time now.

What I have:

I have Visual Studio 2005 Professional

  Express editions of VS do not suit my needs

I have Vista Ultimate 64 bit as my OS, on my development machine

What I need:

To embed a SQL database within my application

   preferably integrated with my IDE

What I want to avoid:

Spending $700 to upgrade VS for the purposes of one project

Having to develop on a differant OS for the purposes of one project

My problem:

Upon a fresh install of Visual Studio 2005 on my development machine, SQL
Server Compact edition does not appear in the refrences list in the C# IDE,
nor does it appear as an option when creating a DB through server explorer,
nor do any of the other integrated features seem to work when following the
documentation.

However, when I install on my laptop which happens to run Vista 32 bit,
everything is fine, appears where expected and works as expected.

Why cannot I not develop using SQL Server Compact 3.1 and VS 2005 just
because I am running a 64 bit OS? Vista Ultimate was the most expensive
option, I'd expect it to be the superset of eveything. Am I missing
something?

I also tryed SQL Server 3.5, but it will not integrate with VS 2005 and
requires VS 2008 for all features.

I develop other projects on this machine and environment with no problem at
all, why such problems when it comes to SQL Server? Did MS just expect all
developers to drop $800 for an upgrade along with $600 for an OS? I do not
run a company, I don't have that kind of money.