At Tech Ed last week, I had high expectations that we would be getting our hands on the VS2010 beta but alas, there was no announcement.

Now that I'm home and back on my [relatively] slow internet connection, Somasegar has just announced that the beta is now available on MSDN for subscribers.

While I am busy downloading the beta, I thought I would highlight some of the new features in .NET 4.0 and VS2010.

This is not an exhaustive list!

.NET 4.0

• #1 in my book is the new version of Entity Framework which is called EF4 (to align with .NET 4.0).
• Parallel Computing (check my earlier blog post for a quick overview)

VS2010 IDE

• VS2010 code editor was rewritten using WPF.
• WPF enables more visual information about your code for example the Document Map Margin, Inline Call Hierarchy, a better way to find references to variables and methods and more.
• Better integration with unit testing features.
• WPF Databinding is seriously improved.
• Windows Azure Tools

ASP.NET

• Dynamic Data 4
• ASP.NET AJAX 4
• Reporting/Charting controls

Silverlight

• It's finally built in! No more separate install

Languages

• Enhancements to VB & C# will not be as huge as in VS2008 but there are plenty to look out for as you will find more parity between VB and C#. VB gets some existing C# features and C# gets some existing VB features.

Team System

• Architecture Explorer
• More ways to diagram the whole kit n' kaboodle of your application
• Testing improvements
• Lots more

Sharepoint

• Lots of new stuff for Sharepoint developers

Windows 7

• Support to take advantage of some of the new Windows 7 so that your apps can look and feel like Windows 7 applications.

VSTO

• VSTO developers will find lots of new features in VS2010 also. I'm admittedly a VSTO luddite. ;-)

So if you are an MSDN subscriber, go grab the beta on MSDN. Just remember to wait until I have got my download complete before you start yours, so that it doesn't slow my download process. Thanks for your consideration. ;-)

As always, it is *highly* recommended that you install betas on a virtual machine or at least a machine that you can repave when the next version comes out.