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Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Released

The much-anticipated beta 2 of Visual Studio 2008 has been released this morning by Microsoft.

As reported yesterday, Microsoft had planned to release beta 2 sometime this week. It's part of a rollout of a number of developer-related products, including an update to the .NET Framework and Silverlight.

The crown jewel, however, is VS 2008. Code-named "Orcas," the first beta was released in April. Although the product is officially set to launch on Feb. 27, 2008, along with Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, it's expected to be finished before the end of this year.

The last major update of Visual Studio was Visual Studio 2005, released in October 2005. The first-ever release of a Visual Studio product was Visual Studio 97. VS 2008 marks the sixth major release of the product line, used by developers to build software for various Microsoft products, including Microsoft Office, Windows Vista, and Web development.

Beta 2 can be downloaded here.

About the Author

Keith Ward is the editor in chief of Virtualization & Cloud Review. Follow him on Twitter @VirtReviewKeith.