In case you didn't see this elsewhere, if you're an MSDN subscriber you can download Visual Studio 2008 right away. And .NET 3.5 of course. All very cool.

While there are a whole host of new features (and the Moth's blog is a great place to read about some of these, for example this link) the three that stand out for me are:

  • Proper targeting of Windows Vista, and great support for developing WPF apps
  • Full support for Office 2007 development in VS Pro - no need to buy a separate product (ie the old VSTO product no longer exists)
  • And of course: LINQ in .NET 3.5

Other people will, I'm sure, have a different set of favourite features. So don't flame me if I've failed to mention something that you think should have been in my top 3! :-)

For those of you developing on Windows Live, don't forget to get hold of the extensions to VS 2008 that make life easier for you.