c# - Organizing using directives

I've been using ReSharper for the past months and, advertising
aside, I can't see myself coding without it. Since I love living on the bleeding "What
the hell just went wrong" edge, I decided to try my luck w/ the latest ReSharper 4.5
nightly builds. It's all nice.

However, I've
noticed that the using directives grouping format has changed, and I wanted to know
which is closer to the general
standards:

[OLD]

#region
            Using directives
using System.X;
using System.Y;
using
            System.Z;
using System.A;
#region
namespace X { ...
            }

[NEW]

namespace
            X {
#region Using directives
using System.X;
using
            System.Y;
using System.Z;
using
            System.A;
#region
...
}

Other
than just lazy loading references, does it serve any special purpose? (Been reading
Scott Hanselman's take on this @ href="http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BackToBasicsDoNamespaceUsingDirectivesAffectAssemblyLoading.aspx"
rel="noreferrer">http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BackToBasicsDoNamespaceUsingDirectivesAffectAssemblyLoading.aspx)

Thanks;

Answer

As Scott proceeds to discover in his post,
there is no runtime difference between these two cases.
Therefore, it does not serve the purpose of lazy loading
references.

If you read the comments in Scott's
blog all the way to the end, you will also see that the developer who passed this rumor
to Scott (Mike Brown) says that he had only heard of this and not tested it
himself.

That said, it is possible that where
you put the using directives might make a difference by giving a compiler error if you
set up an alias for a type inside a namespace, and you have another
type with the same name defined in the namespace. But that's no
runtime difference of course.

Finally, I believe
that MS coding guidelines say to do it as ReSharper 4.5 does. But it's silly to blindly
follow this rule "because MS says so",
since

1. It has been proved
   that it offers no benefit.


2. Your team's (or your) usual
   coding style may very well be different.