Joe's Blog

Microsoft has just announced several items regarding Visual Studio 2010 and the .Net Framework 4.0.

 

My guess of an October timeframe for the release of VS 2010 BETA 2 has panned out, as it is available today on MSDN for subscribers.  It will be available to the general public on the 21st, check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio for public download and breaking news.

An “official” launch date of March 22, 2010 has been announced.  Where it is going to happen is still a secret (they haven’t figured it out yet? :-)), however, this is the official launch, so expect to see final bits ahead of it.

There is a simplified packaging scheme for VS 2010 with a  new licensing paradigm for MSDN and Visual Studio 2010, highlighted by something known as the “Ultimate Offer”.   As part of this, MSDN is being redesigned for a better online knowledge transfer experience and Azure compute hours are going to be part of the MSDN subscription.  This should spur more use of Microsoft’s Cloud Computing platform.

Now that BETA 2 bits are available and a final release of the product will take place in March, you should start considering using VS 2010 and the .Net Framework 4.0 for developer projects being delivered in the first half of next year.