Visual Studio and .NET 3.5 SP1 released

Ok, this is old news to some. But mainly because the beta has been around for quite some time and Scott Guthrie didn't make an official announcement on this.
So, although it slipped my attention (some Download Notification letter brought it to my attention), you should definitely check out the SP1.

It's more than just the usual bugfix SP1 that came out of Redmond this time. The feature list is pretty impressive, and they incorporated RTM versions of Astoria and Entity Framework!

For the feature list of the Visual Studio SP1 (source):

• Improved WPF designers
• SQL Server 2008 support
• ADO.NET Entity Designer
• Visual Basic and Visual C++ components and tools (including an MFC-based Office 2007 style ‘Ribbon’)
• Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server (TFS) addresses customer feedback on version control usability and performance, email integration with work item tracking and full support for hosting on SQL Server 2008
• Richer JavaScript support, enhanced AJAX and data tools, and Web site deployment improvements

And the features of .NET Framework 3.5 SP1:

• Performance increases between 20-45% for WPF-based applications – without having to change any code
• WCF improvements that give developers more control over the way they access data and services
• Streamlined installation experience for client applications
• Improvements in the area of data platform, such as the ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services and support for SQL Server 2008’s new features

So, I've been using the beta for some time now, and can't live without it any more. Go and get SP1, it really delivers on many things (like the C# background compiler in Visual Studio):

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Download

Btw: you don't need to download .NET 3.5 SP1 if you're already installing VS2008 SP1. The VS2008 SP1 setup installed .NET 3.5 with it.