Well, Microsoft promised these releases would come “this summer” so I guess it’s no surprise that Visual Studio 2009 2008 SP1 is out this week, following closely on the heels of SQL Server 2008

It should go without saying that my favorite feature is the performance increases of between 205 and 45% for WPF-based applications — without having to change any code (or indeed, even recompile, just get your end users to download SP1 for .Net 3.5 ). The improved designers, extra controls, ADO.Net Entity Framework, and so on are well worth the download of SP1 for Visual Studio 2008 (or the upgrade for the Express Versions). It’s really hard to understand how they figure this is a “Service Pack” ... when it seems clear that they should have just waited until now to launch VS 2008 together with SQL Server. Imagine what it would have been like if they’d held off Vista and Server 2008 too … [o.O]

Well, time to go install some upgrades. Hopefully Silverlight 2.0 will come out of beta really soon too, and I’ll finally be out of this ridiculously extended period of using beta software for everything. (Well, ok, I’ll still be using a CTP of PowerShell to take advantage of my new superfast WPF toys, but nevermind). Hopefully I’ll find some time to play with this stuff sometime this week in-between finishing my Master’s paper…