Amazon is now accepting preorders for Microsoft"s Visual Studio .NET. Customers must wait until January 17 for the shipped product, almost a month earlier than the official launch slated for February. Pricing in the Amazon online catalog is set at $999.99 USD for the professional edition of the programming suite. Other variants are available through the site including a January 10 release of Visual Basic .NET 2002, Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect, Visual Studio.NET Developer Enterprise 2002, and upgrade releases.
Visual Studio .NET and Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect introduce three significant new features: software modeling, database modeling, and development frameworks and templates. Over 20 different programming languages -- including Microsoft"s latest implementation of Java -- are supported. It also yields support for Web standards such as XML, SOAP, and UDDI to extend interoperability across platforms.
Beta 2 was released on June 19, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of Visual Basic - a language that stood as the basis for an entire generation of Windows applications.
A Microsoft spokeperson was not available for comment.