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 終于發布了！請注意，VS2008此次的測試版本擁有Go Live授權，這也意味著這個版本可以加入生產環境工作。

VS 2008 和 Visual Web Developer 2008 Express 可以同時與VS2005，.NET 3.5 Beta2同時運行。內含下載。

Visual Studio 2008是面向Windows Vista、Office 2007、Web 2.0的下一代開發工具，代號“Orcas”。今天微軟推出了其Beta 2測試版，涵蓋了該產品線的絕大部分版本，功能也基本完整，與稍后即將推出的RTM版不會有什么差別。

Visual Studio 2008的最終正式版將于2008年2月27日發布，與SQL Server 2008、Windows Server 2008同時登場。

下載: Visual Studio 2008 Beta2 下載地址
下載: Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 IMG光盤鏡像下載：

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虛擬機鏡像下載：

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，微軟還在日前發布了.NET Framework 3.5的Beta 2測試版，可以配合Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2進行開發，不過為了不影響ASP.ENT AJAX 1.0，請安裝“DisableAjaxPolicy”。