Visual Studio 2010 gets a new launch date

After announcing in late 2009 that it was adding an unexpected extra test release to its Visual Studio 2010 schedule -- resulting in a push-back of the launch of the product -- Microsoft has rescheduled the official launch event.

The new launch date for VS 2010 and .NET Framework 4 is Monday, April 12, according to a one-line post on a Developer Division's Marketing and Communications Manager Rob Caron's blog.

The original launch date for VS 2010 and .Net 4 was March 22. A previously unplanned Release Candidate of the technologies is slated to go to testers in February.

Microsoft is positioning Visual Studio 2010 as its tool platform to support Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Azure, SQL Server, Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. The suite is slated to feature new drag and drop bindings for Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation; interoperability with the ASP.Net model view controller (MVC), better multicore support and UML support, among other new features.

Microsoft unveiled in October the four planned Visual Studio 2010 versions and their pricing.

Speaking of Visual Studio 2010, I recently stumbled onto a matrix (which requires Silverlight to view it), which presents the enhancements over previous versions of Visual Studio that will be part of the 2010 release. One  goal of the matrix is to help developers convince their bosses they'll need the 2010 version of the product when it releases this spring. And to help bust some myths around Visual Studio 2010, as well....