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S. Somasegar, Senior VP of the Microsoft Developer Division, broke the news yesterday that the first beta of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET FX 4 has been released:
Today, we are releasing Beta 1 of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET FX 4. If you are a MSDN subscriber, you can download the Beta today from here. For the rest of the world, the Beta will be publicly available on Wednesday.
Over the last many months I had blogged about a lot of new and interesting features that are in VS 2010 and .NET 4. You can see those features and many more in Beta 1. We have more work to do in terms of finishing up the feature work for some of the scenarios and getting to the right levels of quality and performance, but we have made enough progress that we wanted to start getting your feedback.
There is more on the new features in VS 2010 at the product page, but my nominee for the most important "sleeper" feature is the array of SharePoint development features which appeal to the burgeoning SharePoint developer market.
Microsoft beta launched their Web "answers" site as Windows Live QnA in August 2006 and it never made it out of beta – MSN QnA will be closing May 21, 2009.
We are ending the QnA beta test and are closing the QnA site on May 21, 2009.
First and foremost, we want to thank you for your participation. Since we introduced QnA, we’ve learned a lot about this new way of communicating and creating valuable content. At this time, we are closing the QnA site, but the experience of running QnA and gathering all of the great feedback you’ve shared with us will certainly influence future product direction.
When QnA moved from the Live Search organization into MSN we announced that we’d be looking for new ways to share questions and answers across MSN and provide new opportunities for you to engage with each other and share your opinions, ideas, and knowledge. That mission has not changed. Questions and answers are still important to MSN and your feedback has been very valuable for our future product strategy. You’ll see more ways of how MSN will empower people to connect and communicate over the coming months.
I must have missed the branding transition to MSN from Windows Live, but then it looks like everybody else did too. The Web answers biz is completely dominated by Yahoo Answers – even Google had to pull out of it – so it is no surprise that QnA had a hard time getting traction.
It was rather overshadowed by the Windows 7 RC, but last week Microsoft also made available the release candidate for Windows Server 2008 R2:
As many of you know, Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate (RC) is made available today to MSDN and TechNet subscribers, with broader availability from Microsoft.com on May 5th. As our final broad test milestone before RTM, this really is the best chance for you to download Windows Server 2008 R2 and put it through its paces while we continue our march to RTM.
There’s more on the new R2 management features by following the link and you can also check the full pitch on Windows Server 2008 R2, but bear in mind that the R2 means it is an interim release between major Windows Server releases, so don’t expect earth shattering enhancements. The biggies to my mind are the improved management and the new release of Hyper-V virtualization.
Last week Microsoft released what will likely be the sole release candidate of Windows 7:
Today Microsoft Corp. has reached a significant milestone with the Release Candidate (RC) of the highly anticipated Windows 7 operating system, now available for download to MSDN and TechNet subscribers at http://technet.microsoft.com. Broader public availability will begin May 5 on the Microsoft Download Center at http://microsoft.com/downloads.
As for what’s new, Microsoft did reveal a virtual Windows XP mode to apparently alleviate lingering Vista compatibility problems presumably for business users (e.g. [1]):
Utilizing Windows Virtual PC, Windows XP Mode allows Windows 7 users to run many Windows XP productivity applications, launched right from the Windows 7 desktop. Windows XP Mode will be available to Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate customers via download or, for the best experience, pre-installed directly on new PCs. As part of today’s announcement, Microsoft is releasing the beta of Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC.
Windows 7 Enterprise users also get XP mode as part of a broader management package. Note that the Windows XP mode seems to be lagging the rest of Windows 7 as it is only labeled a beta.
So if there are no show stoppers discovered in the release candidate, when will Windows 7 be released? Microsoft isn’t saying, but there are lots of signs and portents like the following:
Windows 7 could launch as early as August:
Although Microsoft Corp. refuses to name a delivery date for Windows 7, it could launch the new operating system as early as August, according to timeline comparisons of significant dates for Windows XP and Windows Vista.
Acer confirms Windows 7 available 23 October:
Acer has confirmed that Windows 7 will be available pre-loaded on their new all-in-one Z5600 PC from the 23 October 2009, not by the end of January 2010 as Microsoft has been previously suggesting.
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Acer also confirmed to us that any Vista-based models purchased in the 30 days prior to this date will be eligible for Microsoft’s free upgrade programme.
It looks like Microsoft will actually hit the Christmas shopping season.
Finally, while the general expectation is that Windows 7 will finally be the replacement for Windows XP that Vista wasn’t, Microsoft is apparently allowing OEMs more time to offer Windows XP as a downgrade although it isn’t clear whether this applies to Windows 7 as well as Vista. More ominously for the severely limited Windows 7 Starter Edition, Microsoft is allowing netbook manufacturers to install Windows XP for a full year after general availability of Windows 7.
