Visual Studio 2010 to launch in March

Microsoft is set to announce on Monday that it is ready with a second beta version of its Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4.0 developer tools. Both products are set for a final release on March 22, Microsoft said.

"Microsoft has reached the home stretch for Visual Studio 2010," said Dave Mendlen, a senior director in Microsoft's developer division. "This is probably the biggest release we've had in many years."

Among the product's features is a Tivo-like recording feature that Microsoft has now dubbed "IntelliTrace."

"That's our time machine," Mendlen said. "We're very proud of that."

Other features new to the 2010 release include support for Windows 7 and Windows Azure as well as tools for building on top of Microsoft's Sharepoint product.

With Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft is also taking the opportunity to scale back the number of different versions it sells, cutting the number of subscription options from seven to three. In a telephone interview, Microsoft Vice President S. "Soma" Somasegar said that move came from customer requests.

They told us "one place you can do better is making it simpler how you package your products," Somasegar said.

Under the new plan, myriad Visual Studio options will be consolidated into Professional, Premium, and Ultimate. Microsoft is planning an "ultimate offer" promotion that will give many current subscribers access to the next-higher version of Visual Studio as well as 750 Windows Azure compute hours per month. Next year, the company plans to change that to offer varying amounts of Azure compute time based on the level of the Visual Studio subscription.

[rexworld]

These things are such a treadmill -- some of us are still working out of Visual Studio 2005. Unless there's tools to make the jump easy, I don't see any reason to transition over to 2008 or 2010.

[shellcodes_coder]

upgrading has always been a headache. First of all you have to manually uninstall older version of VS and then install the new one

[aubskibob]

I'd say it's all dependent on whether or not your company can benefit from leveraging the features. Even if the transition was completely painless, I think people would still only change based on features. Also, a painless transition usually means not much content was added.

[renGek]

I have 3 machines at work at the moment where each has vs 2003, 2005 and 2008 installed concurrently. Have never had an issue with all 3 installed. I agree that if you don't have a reason, don't upgrade. I didn't want to bother with 2008 until our projects needed some of the foundation classes and workflow. But since 2010 is close and we're not ready to go live for several months I'm hoping I can ditch 2008 and go 2010. Then I can ditch my last 2003 apps and then I would only have to support 2.0 and 4.0 apps.

[Mr. Dee]

I love the new Visual Studio logo. I really love how Microsoft focusing deeply on rich branding.

[shellcodes_coder]

true

[shellcodes_coder]

Using Visual Studio 2008 pro right now and it's just awesome. One of the best development environment for C++ and C#. Can't wait :)

Using Visual Studios Team System 2008 Developer Edition, Only the cliente we have access to the server as MS Gold Partners but prefer using Subversion. Most of our development right now continues to target framework 2.0 Can't wait for 2010 mainly because of optional params on C# methods.

[fafafooey]

My MSDN Professional subscription expired and I'm not sure I'm going to renew - it ticks me off that they do not include Expression Blend as part of the Professional subscription. If they think Silverlight is such an important product, they would make visual development for it part of their lower level subscriptions.

[csharpner]

Amen Brother!!!!

[AaronMK]

Hopefully they will offer more reasonable prices. I love Visual Studio. It provides a seamless experience that I have not found in the various freeware IDEs. I use it more for cross platform toolkits like Qt than the Windows stuff. If I did not get Visual Studio from work, that would change the value proposition of getting a Mac quite a bit for me. Mac includes their full IDE for free, and integrates the types of profiling tools that are only available once you reach the Team Edition at $2,799 for Visual Studio. While there are free "Express Editions", they are more of a tease than real products, lacking some basic things like non-cumbersome 64-bit support.

Hopefully with 2010, Microsoft will offer more reasonable pricing. Otherwise, it might only take work deciding not to give me a copy to make me a Mac convert.

[aafuss]

Hope the free Express versions will still be offered-many people often use that edition, before moving ono paid editions.

[freebird1974]

There is features in Visual Studio 2008 that I haven't even tried yet and now there's another version coming. Might have to skip this version

[windooor7]

@by freebird1974"There is features in Visual Studio 2008 that I haven't even tried yet and now there's another version coming" Yes microsoft is moving to fast on OS this days I think too much copy and paste on their disposal."code reuse" There is nothing wrong with VS2008 other than it will not support NEframe 4. and I belive the next version of XNA studio might require VS 2010. Giving no choice but to upgrade..The next WPF might be a reason too. Window forms is DEAD or dying. Iwish mcirosoft could open up the limt by letting vs c++ be part of forms and xna ,and asp.forms..

[freebird1974]

@ windooor7

This is how Microsoft gets people to upgrade, by making certain key features unavailable in older version. I also agree win forms are a dying breed with the internet. The only actual application that my kids use is Firefox, everything else they use is through that.

[DrtyDogg]

How dare Microsoft do that, I mean I can develop Flash 10 with my old Macromedia Flash MX program, oh no I can't. Well I can sync my iPhone with iTunes 5, oh I can't do that either. Well iPhoto '08 will recognize the faces of my portraits, still wrong. Well here is one for sure, actually, I can't think of any software vendor that retrofits old software with features from it's newest version.

[juan_trujillo]

Please look at VSTS 2010... If someone cares about testing tools or software quality this is a must have and a big improvement over VSTS 2008. I just did a review against tools that are 5 times more expensive and this tool is way ahead if we are talking about MSFT environments.

[mbjr]

Aw man! I just upgraded my developer tools to Visual Studio 2008 a week ago. In about 4 months i'll be obsolete AGAIN. I feel like an out of shape athlete, running a marathon. Right when I catch up, I have about 10 miles to go. :)