Man! If you're doing C++ then you definitely want to get onto 2012/2013 ASAP, the improvements in tooling are amazing. "Navigate to.." alone is worth it.
The frustrating part is that MS actually removed the existing code from the already existing libraries (but which are not binary interchangeable between the compiler versions) in order to disable the support for Windows 2000. Otherwise I'd be able to use even VS 2013. They did the same for XP with VS 2012, but more people made the fuss so now even VS 2013 should support XP, AFAIK.