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Microsoft Slashes VS 2008 Prices

Redmond offers major discounts for Visual Studio 2008.

While showcasing additional functionality for its forthcoming Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft said it will be slashing the price of the existing 2008 version of its integrated tooling environment.

The company announced discounts of as much as 30 percent for Visual Studio 2008 at last month's TecháEd EMEA 2008 Developers Conference in Barcelona, Spain. The VS 2008 price promotions are designed to provide discounts to developers using competitive products and to those already in the Microsoft ecosystem who may want to upgrade to the Microsoft Developer Network or Visual Studio Team System (VSTS).

"This is a very difficult economic climate for our customers," says Dave Mendlen, Microsoft's director of developer marketing.

The company has also offered discounts in between product cycles in the past. The price promotions are expected to continue until June 1, 2009.

First Looks at VS 2010
 The move comes as Microsoft has started talking up Visual Studio 2010. At TecháEd EMEA, Visual Studio General Manager Jason Zander offered a closer look at Microsoft's plans for VS 2010.

The upcoming IDE will support Microsoft's next-generation platforms, including .NET 4.0, Windows 7, Office 14 and SharePoint. It will also integrate several existing out-of-band technologies such as the ASP.NET Model-View-Controller framework, improved JavaScript IntelliSense, jQuery support, one-click deployment of ASP.NET apps and Silverlight 2 tooling. SharePoint tooling such as an explorer and project template -- basic functionality not available in VS 2008 -- will be added.

Microsoft is also trying to win over native coders still loyal to VS 6.0 with new code-driven features such as the ability to handle massive amounts of code (project systems and file sizes), a quick search across languages filters and a "generate from usage" feature, which allows developers "to generate a type, constructor, method or property by inferring its usage in code." More details are available at Microsoft Senior Vice President S. "Soma" Somasegar's blog.

About the Author

Kathleen Richards is the editor of RedDevNews.com and executive editor of Visual Studio Magazine.

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