Sorry, I lost the URL, it's on my computer at home, but if you head to MSDN you'll find it. There are almost ten files at 700 MB a piece, but it's a free download, and a beta.

Just wanted to let people know - I want to get some hands on experience with the new goodies so I can hit the ground running. Probably other people do, too.

Hi,

I guess you mean the ORCAS (code name), which is the next version of the Visual Studio 2005 IDE for .Net development.

You can download the Orcas CTP's (monthly releases) from the MSDN subscriptions site.

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Here's the link:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700831.aspx

Sweet - thanks, everyone! How ironic, that I just saw Republican's thread about getting VS 05 for free when this is right underneath it.

Just to clarify, this is a CTP, or "Community Test Preview," which is a fancy term for beta. So I wouldn't go ditching the old, ie current, stuff just yet. But great stuff to play with.

For what it's worth, I use VS 2005 Express for production applications and it works great (and is free).

On a totally different account:

I use VS2005 at work and I updated it with Framework 3.0.
I cant see any changes in VS after installing such a heavy update for hours. I searched for the 'advantages/changes in Framework 3.0' on some websites and it seems like there is nothing fancy about it anyway; probably until full VS 2007 comes in the market.

Originally Posted by RickPlmr

For what it's worth, I use VS 2005 Express for production applications and it works great (and is free).

You can get Standard Edition free if you watch and critique three Microsoft learning videos. Seems like over the past few years they've always got some kind of deal like that going on. They're trying to attract more Windows programmers, to keep their O/S competitive. You might need to dig around MSDN a bit to find the deal du jour, but you can usually get a free license ( not a 90 day test or whatever ) for dev tools if you're really inclined.

I'd say the Express Edition IDE is pretty limited, and that alone justifies the bit of work. But I haven't tried the 2007 version yet, that's based on 2005 aka 2.0