Files & Disc Images for Self-installation

If you prefer to install the software yourself, you can download separate disc images for the following products:

• Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Express Editions
• Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Standard Edition
• Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Professional Edition
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Foundation Server
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Test Load Agent
• MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2

Virtual PC Images with Pre-installed Software

If you prefer the convenience of evaluating prerelease software in a virtual machine environment, you can download VPC images for the following products that include pre-installed instances of the prerelease software indicated, including any required prerequisite software. You will need Virtual PC or Virtual Server to run this image. Depending on your hardware, the download files make take between 30-60 minutes to decompress these self-extracting files.

• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite VPC
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite & Team Foundation Server VPC
• These downloads are differencing disks. To use them, you must also download Visual Studio Code Name Orcas Base Image contains the OS and is a one-time download for all the Virtual PC images that lay on top of it.

Zoom, Zoom

Microsoft Secure Content Downloader

Microsoft Secure Content Downloader (MSCD), based on the Avalanche peer-to-peer (P2P) research project from Microsoft Research Cambridge’s Incubation team, will be trialed beginning July 27th for distribution of Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2008, augmenting the traditional, Web-based distribution channel. This trial is scheduled to end on November 30th.

If you got to have it, and you got to have it NOW, then MSCD is the way to go. It cuts the time down into hours, instead of days. But I didn't see where they had the Virtual PC images available, and those were what I was really after.