14 DAY TRIAL // The second Beta for the Redmond company’s development platform and tools is going to become available for download today, October 19th, 2009. Microsoft revealed that MSDN subscribers would be the first to get their hands on Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2. Just as it was the case with the Beta 1 development milestone of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4, the Redmond company will, soon after releasing the bits to MSDN subscribers, open access to the general public. The software giant informed that, come October 21st, 2009, all developers, even those that were not associated with MSDN, would be able to download and start test driving Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2. (via Mary Jo Foley) At the time of this article the downloads weren't live yet.
Visual Studio 2010 alongside .NET Framework 4 debuted into Beta in May 2009, and it will take Microsoft less than a year to finalize the two. Spring 2010 will bring with it the commercial availability of the RTM versions of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4. Microsoft noted that developers should expect the two solutions on March 22nd, 2010.
With its latest iteration of Windows hitting the shelves in just three days, both Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 come with support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The second Beta of Visual Studio 2010 also supports Windows Azure, SQL Server, the Office 2010 System and SharePoint Server 2010.
In addition to expanding support for its developer platform and tools, Microsoft has also managed to shrink down the .NET Framework, making version 4 no less than 81% smaller than its precursor, v3.5. The Redmond company also noted that Visual Studio 2010 would be offered to customers in four editions.
The Visual Studio 2010 Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) strategy includes:
- Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN, an offering that brings to the table functionality equivalent to Visual Studio Team System. The price tag will be $11,924 for a new license and no less than $3,841 for a renewal. - Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN will cost $5,469 for a full license and $2,299 per renewal. - Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN is cheaper, just $1,199 new and $799 per renewal. - And Visual Studio 2010 Professional without MSDN is even cheaper, only $799.