Tech-Ed 2008 Wrap-up

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Quite a few people at Tech-Ed wanted to know more about the various components of Visual Studio Team System (which we sometimes refer to as SKUs). For example, how does Team Foundation Server (TFS) fit in with the client SKUs? What are the differences between Visual Studio Team System Development Edition and Visual Studio Team System Test Edition? What is Visual Studio Team Suite?

These are very valid questions when you're considering which SKU to buy and since I'm not a sales or marketing guy I'll defer to some nice diagrams and comparisons already available on the web:

While we were demoing at Tech-Ed we were giving out trial versions of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite, with some detailed tutorials (called Hands-On Labs) and they were very popular. If you'd like to try out the Virtual PC Image as well, download it here.

Some of my colleagues at Microsoft were interviewed for a panel discussion about various aspects of Team System which is worth watching to see where Team System is heading (Visual Studio Team System Panel - Meet the Team).

I also managed to catch a few sessions at Tech-Ed and one of the more interesting talks was about Visual Studio 2008 Tip of Day. Each day for more than 230 days now, Sara Ford has been posting blog entries with tips for Visual Studio.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention an interesting series on Channel 9 that I found out about while at Tech Ed. This Week On Channel 9 covers some of the highlights from Channel 9 blogs, articles and videos. The focus is on the developer, which works well for me. The current episode talks about PDC, Pex, Build Bunnies, UltraCam and the Live Agents SDK.