It was released a couple of days ago, but it's still good news.

For all those using beta 1 or those who want to see what Microsoft has in store for the next version of Visual Basic .NET, I suggest you download and install Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Beta 2 Express Edition (Free of charge) from here: Visual Studio 2005 Beta Downloads. Of course, if you have a MSDN subscription, you can get the full IDEs which are also available.

I've been using it for the past two days and I can safely say, it's a wonderful piece of software that not only looks very pretty, but also adds tons of features that make programming so much easier (and fun ).

Microsoft also says that Beta 2 is ready to begin development of proper apps, not just test apps, and it seems stable enough to me. I've noticed a couple of crashes, but they are few and far between (compared to the February CTP release).