Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 is now available for download for MSDN subscribers. Non-MSDN subscribers can also order a copy from Microsoft and have it delivered in a few weeks. I think this is free of charge, with no shipping charge either in the U.S. but check the site's fine print to be sure.
This is an important beta for us and our authors. We're only publishing 1 beta book on this release (John Kauffman's Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 Databases Beta Preview) and all of our final release Visual Studio 2005 books will wait for all the code and procedures to be checked against the final version of the software to release. But in order to get to that point, the authors and tech editors now all have to get busy checking what they've written so far against beta 2. Beta 1 had a lot of features that weren't working, or in the case of ASP.NET, there were a lot of changes from beta 1 to beta 2, so the authors will be busy the next few months.
Also of note, along with the main "full" version if Visual Studi0 2005 Beta 2, there are new Beta 2 versions of all the Express Edition versions of Visual Web Developer (the new ASP.NET tool), VB, C#, etc. And, importantly, there's also a new community technical preview (CTP) of SQL Server Express that you'll want to get to work with if you are building database apps with any of the VS Express Beta 2s.
Running thought for the day: I've really been in a running funk the last 10 days, and not even really in the mood to mention running in the blog. I had a 15k a week ago Saturday that I was using as a tune-up for the big Indy 500 Mini-Marathon in 3 weeks and the 15k went poorly. I've got another 15k this Sat which is my last good chance for a good tune-up before the "mini" and I need it to go well to get my spirits back up. As of today, the forecast for Sat a.m. is rain, not what I need to see.
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