Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Available, Editions Announced

Beta 2 of Visual Studio (VS) 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 is now available, and the products will be released to manufacturing (RTM) on Mar. 22, 2010. New edition packaging and pricing for the VS 2010 product line will eliminate the Team System brand while continuing and improving on the application life-cycle management tool’s functionality. A promotional offer provides an edition upgrade for VS 2008 customers with MSDN Premium subscriptions. The new product lineup should help organizations select the best development solution, but the highest VS 2010 edition will cost 9% more than the highest VS 2008 edition.

Team System Brand Eliminated

VS 2010 Beta 2 is likely to be the last beta before a release candidate of the product arrives, and the Beta 2 license allows developers to implement and deploy production applications before the VS 2010 RTM if they purchase the product when it is released. Additions to VS in Beta 2 include integrated Windows Azure and SharePoint 2010 development tools, Silverlight 3 and ASP.NET Model-View-Controller (MVC) 2 support, and refreshed user interfaces. Changes to the .NET Framework 4 in Beta 2 include a smaller client profile installation, additions to the Base Class Library, and improvements to the new Task Parallel Library over the previous beta.