I installed the MSDN Visual Studio 2005 CTP and found out it looks like quite a different build as the one handed out at the PDC. When you compare version numbers for VS you get 7.1 for VS.NET 2003, 8.0.30703 for the PDC build and 8.0.40301 for VS.NET 2005. It gets even closer to the real thing when you look at the version number of the .NET framework. Which is 1.1 for VS.NET 2003, 1.2 for the PDC  build and 2.0 for VS.NET 2005. That's getting close to the real thing !

There are nice new project types. Like Word and Excel projects. Seen that at the PDC, it is a whole different ball-game compared to the current office projects. A distributed application was a project which resulted in a “not supported“ message, now it is called a distributed service solution and looks a lot like Whitehorse.

The only thing which puzzles me is the name. The name VS 2005 is all over the place but at several spots they still call it Whidbey. Never mind : check it  out !

Peter