I attended the VS Launch in San Francisco yesterday.  To be fair, the launch
was shared with SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk 2006, but I was mostly
interested in Visual Studio.  Most of the special talks were centered around
using VS with SQL and BizTalk as expected, but I got a chance to talk to
lots of experts and I came away with a couple of impressions:

1. I can't wait to start using VS 2005 as a C++ programming.  The
improvements to MFC and the IDE are worth the price of upgrade imo.
2. I think Team System looks very promising and I went from not really
understanding it to thinking I need to convice our company to invest in it.
3. Net 2.0 really looks incredibly promising.  There have been tons of
improvements.
4. I don't think I'll invest time in WinForms.  I think I'll just keep using
MFC and start investing in WPF (WinFX and eventually Windows Vista).

There were a lot of people there.  Several people I talked to in lines
didn't even know why they were there, but just heard Microsoft was having a
party and wanted free-stuff.  Others were very well informed and I had
several interesting conversations during the day.  It was a long day and
after waiting for over 1/2 an hour in line to get a few bites of cheese we
decided we'd call it a day and left before the big party last evening.

One really exciting piece of news:  You can download and use Visual Studio
Express for C#, VB, J#, or C++ for a year absolutely free.  This is a great
way to get a look at the new IDE, etc.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/default.aspx

You can also get SQL 2005 Express for the same, um, price, although there
doesn't seem to be a time limit on that one.  My hats off to Micrsoft for
helping younger people, those with lower financial ability, and college
students to get copies of this valuable software for free.  Good stuff.

Tom