Microsoft Offering Deals on Visual Studio Upgrades

The official launch date for Visual Studio 2010 is barely a month away. So Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is cranking up the upgrade deals to further entice developers.

No surprise then that the offers kick in on April 12, the day that the latest version of Microsoft Visual Studio has its official coming out.

“Today, I’m announcing our Standard Offer promotion to ensure current Standard Edition customers can easily and affordably move up to Visual Studio 2010,” S. Somasegar, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Developer Division, said in a post on his blog Monday night.

“The Standard Offer enables customers who purchased Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 Standard Edition to upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 at the previous Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition $299 retail price,” he said. That offer, he added, runs from April 12 through Oct. 12.

Visual Studio 2010, which was delayed for nearly a month while the company worked on quality issues, adds new capabilities including multi-monitor support, and “the ability to target multiple versions of the .NET Framework with one tool,” Somasegar said.

Microsoft released a final “release candidate” — the last test phase before the company releases a product — in February. The RC, as it’s called, included both Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.

Besides the discounted offers, Microsoft has other deals in the works for developers.

“Today, we’re also unveiling an offer for customers who purchase Visual Studio Professional at retail. To help these developers fully realize the power and benefits of a MSDN subscription, I am announcing MSDN Essentials, a one-year trial MSDN subscription that will be included with every retail copy of Visual Studio Professional sold,” Somasegar said in his post.

Included in the deal, MSDN Essentials subscribers will be able to access Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, and SQL Server 2008 Datacenter R2. They will also get 20 hours of time on Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud computing platform, as well as priority support in MSDN forums, the post said.

Finally, the company is offering a pre-order option for Visual Studio 2010 with MSDN Essentials that starts March 9 and runs until launch on April 12..

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