Visual Studio Orcas Beta

I only downloaded the March CTP about 2 weeks ago. Then last week Microsoft released Beta 1.
Its not like I'm complaining... I have 20gb a month so whats the problem?

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5d9c6b2d-439c-4ec2-8e24-b7d9ff6a2ab2&DisplayLang=en

That's it. Download it. There's also a white paper on Orcas:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=17319EB4-299C-43B8-A360-A1C2BD6A421B&displaylang=en

You can find Virtual PC versions floating around for the March CTP but even more interesting is that you can also download Beta 1 of Team Foundation Server and Team Suite as Virtual PC images as well.

Personally, I'm looking forward to LINQ, XLINQ, and intellisense for Javascript amongst other things. ASP.NET Ajax is also fully integrated and supported in Orcas. Check the white paper appendix for a full list of all the new features.

Going with this release is the Beta release of .Net Framework 3.5. I must say that I am a little lost when it comes to Microsoft's version numbering. Anyway, no need to install all those extensions floating around... Just go for 3.5. Suffice to say that there are a lot of cheaper hosting companies that do not support .Net 2.0 yet (well mine anyway!) let alone, 3.0, or 3.5. The releases are coming thick and fast, although it seems an eternity since I first saw LINQ at Tech Ed last year.

Oh finally, check out the video from ScottGu on the Silverlight "Getting Started" page.
http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/

You can download the 1.1 alpha tools for building Silverlight applications in Orcas. And Expression Blend is available for 6 month trial from the Microsoft web site. You'll be able to fully recreate the integration that Scott demonstrates in the video.

I certainly will be once this 5gb download finishes...