Microsoft said on Monday that it had shipped a Release Candidate (RC) copy of its development software Visual Studio 2010.
Visual Studio is a development environment that allows developers to create GUI applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all platforms supported by Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows CE, .NET Framework, .NET Compact Framework and Microsoft Silverlight.
There are no new features in the RC release from beta 2 and Microsoft has focussed on speed improvements. A Microsoft spokesperson stated: “We heard from customers that performance in Beta 2 wasn’t everything they had hoped it would be. The RC released today delivers enhanced performance and is an added milestone to garner even more customer feedback before the final build is released. Specifically, customers will see performance improvements in loading solutions, typing, building and debugging.”
Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 will launch in cities all over the world on April 12. Major events will be taking place in the UK, China, Malaysia, India, and in the US.
The RC is available to MSDN subscribers today and will be available to the public on February 10.
The idea of MultiPoint Server is that it will reduce the cost for many businesses and schools worldwide. The solution works by having a central point for one server to exist and multiple mice, keyboards, speakers and monitors attached to the one system. Each session provides a user with a unique Remote Desktop to the MultiPoint Server. The product is a brain child of Microsoft Research India. Microsoft officials demonstrated 16 monitors simultaneously playing 720p HD video using the processing power of one PC (an Intel Core i7 system) in 2009. Microsoft is amining the shared resource computing technology primarily at schools but claims businesses who wish to train staff on technologies could benefit too. The cost savings are huge as each session would only require an additional monitor, keyboard, mouse and a user license to use the Remote Desktop session in MultiPoint.
This week a beta build of the new server operating system leaked online for all to see. The build, named RC2, became available on popular file sharing networks and BitTorrent sites early this week. As the operating system is simply a Server OS there’s little to see. Windows MultiPoint Server 2010 is built on top of Windows Server 2008 R2.
Microsoft expects to make the final edition available to schools around the world in the first half of 2010 according to Ira Snyder, General Manager, Windows MultiPoint Server.
An internal build of the upcoming Microsoft Office 2010 has leaked to the web according to Wzor. The build comes in at a staggering 3.51GB which is significantly larger than the public beta build which was at 749mb; the leaked build is tagged with the build number 14.0.4730.1007
There is no information as to why the build is so much larger but one speculation is that it may include debugging software. Another possibility is that the code may not be packed for media release which would make the build much larger than the compressed format released to the general public.
The screenshot does show that there does appear to be more applications in the leak than the beta that was released to the general public which may also be why the build is significantly larger; currently both X64 and X86 builds are circulating the web.
Earlier this month we revealed Microsoft’s upcoming release of Windows Live Messenger 2010 (Part of Wave 4). This week the guys over at Geeksmack have gotten a hold of a few screenshots of Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Photo Gallery. The screenshots are of build 15.0.2403.826, which should be noted is very early versions of Wave 4 and it is expected that much will change before the actual beta early next year.
Not much can be said about the two above screenshots except that both Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Mail both now feature a Ribbon UI.
In an interesting move, it appears that Windows Live writer will now sport a new menu similar to Microsoft Office. The orange icons are currently a placeholder, and will not be in the final build. Not much is known about the current internal builds shown above, but as far as we can tell it appears that no new features have been added at this point.
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