>Comments interspersed...
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>>...and to get it is quite simple:
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>>1. Wait a few months (unless you want to be a guinea pig AND a glutton for additional Beta Pain, in which case you can do some free and voluntary testing and quality assurance for MS)
>
>While Beta 2 does have its warts, its really stable. People are already using it for everyday use.

For someone who has learned from a string of bad experiences to not trust anything first version coming out of Microsoft, I personally would never put any MS Beta on my computer. Ever.

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>>2. Pay some $600.00 or more (depending on your version) to get a new upgrade that supposedly fixes the previous upgrade
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>Unless you have an MSDN subscription. Then it's included.

Sure, assuming you are willing to pay anywhere from $1,199t ($799 subsequent annual renewals) to $10,939 ($3,499 subsequent renewals) for the priviledge of NOTpaying some $600-1,000 for one time updates that may or may not fix a problem that existed in the previous version.

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>>3. Go through the new version installation, which may or may not mess up something else in your system
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>Side-by-side installation is supported and was a high priority for this release.

Side-by-side has been advertised for the last few versions, but evidently something "leaked" from VS 2005 to VS 2008 anyway.

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>>4. Upgrade any number of third party libraries to synchronize them with the new VS 2010
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>There will always be that, but the original question on this thread asked about learning, not using in production. However, Beta 2 comes with a GoLive! license, so you can use it for production if you want.

The original question had to do with trying to learn using VS2008, but configuration migrated from VS2005 stopped the learner in his tracks.

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>>5. Pray
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>>6. Play
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>>P.S. Why wouldn't someone complain about Microsoft if they use an MS OS and an MS framework and the darn thing STILL doesn't work right? Who should one complain to/about? If my brand new Toyota doesn't start in the morning, the first thing I would do is call the Toyota dealer, not the GM dealer. Ugggggh...
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>It's called anti-trust. Or did you miss all that?

I miss your point here. If you are using an MS OS and MS framework and the framework has a problem, you should put the blame squarely on MS, antitrust or no antitrust. The reason being that since all moving parts in this particular system are made by MS, MS is the only responsible party here. So, I would certainly blame MS on this one.