In exciting news, Microsoft have shipped Visual Studio codenamed “Orcas” Beta 1. You can download the ISO images or the preinstalled VPC if you prefer.

From the MSDN Visual Studio Futures site

**Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” Beta 1
**

Visual Studio code name “Orcas” is the next generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office system, and the Web. Beta 1 consists of multiple releases including, Visual Studio Professional Edition, Visual Studio Team Suite and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, which are available as installation media ISO images you can use to install the products. Alternatively, you can download VPC images with the software pre-installed. In addition, you can download prerelease versions of Visual Basic Express, Visual C++ Express, Visual C# Express, and Visual Web Developer.

Download the ISO’s or VPC images from http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700831.aspx

Reading Soma’s blog post, the .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 1 has also shipped.