Visual Studio 2008 RTM Available for Download

The wait for the final version of Visual Studio 2008 is over. Microsoft has released the product to manufacturing and has also made it available for download via MSDN. The Redmond company indicated earlier in November that Visual Studio 2008's code would go gold by the end of the month and lived up to its promise. In fact, at the end of the past week, the MSDN Subscriptions WebLog, without revealing the actual RTM date, informed users that Visual Studio 2008 would be made available for download in the immediate future.

"Check out the "Top Subscriber Downloads" area on http://msdn2.microsoft.com/subscriptions for VS 2008 downloads. You will also be able to access these downloads by clicking on the Subscriber Downloads and Product Keys links that take you to all of your downloads. We are using two different platforms to make these downloads available - to improve discoverability and reliability, and to balance demands on the systems," reads a message posted on the MSDN Subscriptions WebLog.

Visual Studio 2008, formerly codenamed Orcas, is the first development suite from the Redmond company tailored for Windows Vista. With Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft is in fact focused on providing tools for the developers that are building on top of its latest Windows client. Visual Studio 2008 also includes .Net Framework 3.5, multitargeting, Language Integrated Query, WPF project templates and many other additional features. The latest Microsoft development suite will be released officially on February 27, 2008.

"The RTM version of Visual Studio 2008 (was codenamed Orcas) is available for download from the MSDN subscribers site. Now I'm going to sound like a licensing guy for a second, but stay with me because I might have good news for you. If you have an MSDN subscription, you have software assurance for Visual Studio. This means that your MSDN subscription Licences you to use all the versions of Visual Studio that are released during the term of your contract. i.e. if you have an MSDN subscription, you have already paid for your rights to use 2008 - go get it, go use it," revealed Neil Kidd, Microsoft UK Developer Tools Technical Specialist.

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