The next version of Visual Studio, Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 (formerly known as, Microsoft Visual Studio code name "Orcas"), will provide an industry-leading developer experience for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and the Web. In addition, it will continue in the Microsoft tradition of development language innovation. To enable early feedback, this page provides links to Community Technology Preview (CTP) and Beta releases of Visual Studio 2008, and for technologies that we plan to include in it. As previews of additional technologies become available, we will make them available from this page.
We encourage you to download and try these early releases. Before installing a release, review the prerequisites as some releases may require additional software prior to installation. As with all prerelease software, we encourage you only to install these on a secondary machine, or in a virtual machine, as they are not supported by Microsoft Services support teams. As the goal of these previews is to gather feedback from the developer community, please use Microsoft Connect to report any issues, or to suggest improvements.
Visual Studio 2008 Beta2 终于发布了！请注意，VS2008此次的测试版本拥有Go Live授权，这也意味着这个版本可以加入生产环境工作。
VS 2008 和 Visual Web Developer 2008 Express 可以同时与VS2005，.NET 3.5 Beta2同时运行。内含下载。
Visual Studio 2008是面向Windows Vista、Office 2007、Web 2.0的下一代开发工具，代号“Orcas”。今天微软推出了其Beta 2测试版，涵盖了该产品线的绝大部分版本，功能也基本完整，与稍后即将推出的RTM版不会有什么差别。
Visual Studio 2008的最终正式版将于2008年2月27日发布，与SQL Server 2008、Windows Server 2008同时登场。
下载: Visual Studio 2008 Beta2 下载地址
下载: Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions
Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 IMG光盘镜像下载：
Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition Beta 2 (722.7MB)
Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition Beta 2 (3126.7MB)
Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Team Suite Beta 2 (3282.5MB)
Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Team Foundation Server Beta 2 (1494.4MB)
Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Test Load Agent Beta 2 (233MB)
MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 (1907.0MB)
Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions Beta 2
Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 VPC虚拟机镜像下载：
Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Team Suite Beta 2 VPC (429.0-4629.0MB)
Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Team Suite & Team Foundation Server Beta 2 VPC (34.8-5634.8MB)
另外，微软还在日前发布了.NET Framework 3.5的Beta 2测试版，可以配合Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2进行开发，不过为了不影响ASP.ENT AJAX 1.0，请安装“DisableAjaxPolicy”。