In the past, Microsoft have been almost too careful about licensing for beta versions of tools and frameworks, stating clearly that beta test versions should not be used for production code. The Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 however has a "Go Live" license which enables us to legally use the beta version of the system to develop line-of-business applications and even to get support for the beta version tools and frameworks.
As someone who is very concerned with code quality and application reliability in my daily job I see this move as a testament to Microsoft's testing and quality regime. In the past, the traditional view of Microsoft software has been to wait for the service pack or version 2.0 before adopting for front-line applications. However, with the emphasis that Microsoft and indeed other software providers place on testing and quality these days, we can be more confident that the first release of a product will be useable and indeed reliable.
I have used Visual Studio 2010 in both pre-beta and beta versions for a while now and I can say that the new features in Visual Studio show a marked emphasis on enabling the developer to understand their code and increase quality by systematic testing and reliability checking. I also know from sources within Microsoft that the Team System improvements, some features of which have been included as standard in Visual Studio 2010, are based on Microsoft's use of their own product; eating thier own dogfood. This gives me even more confidence in the tools. Rest assured that you too can be confident in the new reliability and usability of Visual Studio.
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