Finally got my hands on Whidbey - will start Express(sing) myself
Yesterday spent the whole day downloading VC++ .NET Express, the 'downloading' finally completed near midnight, and then the installation started. .NET v2 runtime got installed quickly, but the setup of VC++ Express was very very slow, I did some calculations and realised that the speed at which it was copying files for installation, it would take around 10 hours!!!, so went to sleep half excited and half frustrated at not being able to see whidbey. With God's grace, setup completed early morning at 7 am!! I had left both my pc and the server on (apparently even after completing download, while setting up, it was downloading something from the net).
The good news is both .NET v2 and VC++ Express are working just fine. I was careful to enable the BITS :-) thanks to Paul Bartlett's earlier post about setting up whidbey.
I started up the IDE and did a Hello World WinForms application in C++/CLI and it worked just fine. What a relief. If MSFT is about to give away Express editions for free then that would be the coolest thing as I see no limitation in Express at all in terms of learning and building applications. I guess the team system and resource editing is not there but I'll manage.
I was suppose to go and see the Annual Kerala boat race this weekend, but I will cancel that and everything else that comes between me and 'Express' , weekends and late nights are now rescheduled for 'Express(sing)'. :-)