Don’t Forget: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Also Launches Today

With all the hoopla going around about Microsoft KIN, it seems many people forgot about another product being released today: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. If you are an MSDN subscriber, feel free to take advantage of downloading it for free. Plus, if you’re a student, you can also obtain Visual Studio 2010 via DreamSpark (for free!), thanks goes out to Paul Thurrott on this one (and Davor P. who tipped him off to it.)

 

I’ve been using Visual Studio 2010 since the initial public beta and have been very impressed with it. Programming just seems so much easier and more fluid with 2010. However, if you remember the good ole days of GWBASIC, then you may not be so happy about an easier programming interface … although I think most of us will enjoy the nice update. I may or may not place some type of review of Visual Studio 2010 on this site. It really depends upon my time schedule and whether I think it’s truly that important to review. After-all, it is just a developer program, right? :)

 

I’m currently downloading it from DreamSpark, as I’m one of those college students. If you don’t have MSDN or don’t qualify for DreamSpark (not sure if MSDNAA has it yet or not, but they should soon, I’ll check later on that), you can always download Visual Studio 2010 Express Edition. (Also, thanks goes to Paul Thurrott and David S. on this one as well.)

 

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Customize Windows 7 with Best of Bing 2

Back before Windows 7 even RTM’ed, Microsoft launched the Windows 7 version of its Personalization Gallery, in which users could download and install additional themepacks for their Windows 7 computers. This site is still alive going along very well, and lately they added a new theme, the Best of Bing 2. This new theme is a compilation of Bing.com’s background images that appear on the website every day. The theme comes with 21 pictures from Bing. It is also a continuation of Bing’s Best that Microsoft released a while back, and if you download both you can have a total of 40 different lively backgrounds. The only downside to these themes is you do have a Bing logo in the lower right corner of the screen, not too big of a deal, I think.

 

View Full Album

 

There are over 60 themes at the Microsoft Personalization Gallery that you can choose from. I’ve downloaded several of them and haven’t been unimpressed yet. Once you download the file you can simply double-click on it to open, it should automatically install itself. Additionally, you can only use themepacks with Windows 7, however, you can always extract the images from the themepack file by using a ZIP extraction utility, such as WinRAR or WinZIP, which then the images themselves can be used on any computer.

 

del.icio.us Tags: windows,bing,update,best of bing,windows 7,themes,background images,free,downloads