Overall, Visual Studio 2008 is an upgrade that most Microsoft-oriented development shops will want to make, in order to develop with new technologies, such as WPF, WCF, and WF, and for new platforms, such as Windows Vista. However, it's not an upgrade that's easily made piecemeal; I'd advise most shops to upgrade all developers on a project once the project itself has been successfully upgraded. In my experience, upgrading projects from VS05 to VS08 has been relatively painless, involving very little in the way of code rewrites.

For shops that still maintain Classic ASP sites, I'd recommend installing VS08 side by side with VS05, at least until Classic ASP and VBScript editing functionality has been restored. And for shops that still use Visual Studio .Net 2003 or older versions because of perceived problems with VS05, I'd suggest seriously evaluating VS08.

With few exceptions, users of every level of Visual Studio will find the 2008 release improved. It's a strong upgrade, and a solid foundation for future development.

The Bottom Line: Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional and Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite

Microsoft, microsoft.com/vstudio
Overall score: Excellent 9.3
Capability: 10/10
Ease of development: 9/10
Documentation: 9/10
Performance: 9/10
Value: 9/10
Cost: Express Editions are free; Standard Edition is US$299 (US$199 upgrade); Professional Edition is US$799 (US$549 upgrade). Subscriptions range from US$1,199 for Visual Studio Professional with MSDN Professional up to US$10,939 for Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite with MSDN Premium.

Platforms: Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista, x86 and x64

Bottom Line: Visual Studio stands alone as the preferred development environment for applications using the .Net Framework, and is a worthy IDE for C++ and Web application development. The 2008 version expands its development targets to include SOA, Web 2.0, Windows Presentation Framework, and Silverlight applications, and extends its data-handling capabilities to include language-integrated queries (LINQ). While not perfect, Visual Studio 2008 provides a solid base for future enhancements from Microsoft and third-party developers.