As the title says it all.. Miscrosoft is gearing up for biggest releases since Vista. The Visual Studio Family gets an Upgrade - the Visual Studio “Orcas” 2008 is already out on Beta 1. To download the Beta1, check out the following link -http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700831.aspx

and for express versions - http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/future/default.aspx

Well the major upgrades on this family of VS (as far as i know.. will add in more as i come to know)

• Based on .NET Framework 3.5 (get the Beta1 of the framework here - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e3715e6f-e123-428b-8a0f-028afb9e0322&displaylang=en. Its still possible to make applications targetting .NET 2.0 or 3.0
• The VS now has support for designing of XAML forms (winforms - WPF) targetting development for Windows Vista 
• no complete support of Silverlight(WPF/E) as of now (is it rite ?)
• improved support for HTML and ASPX pages.
• CSS functionality greatly derived from the Expression Web Suite. - so no need of getting a WYSIWUG editor specially for editing the look and feel of the webpages.
• VS web developer has full support for ATLAS (ASP.NET AJAX) web applications.
• Also included is complete intellisense for Javascript (wich had been missin from the 2005 studio family)
• Ability to store/get data from LINQ sources. LINQ is a new query language which is toatally integrated in .NET 3.5 and aims at making the data access process faster implementing it the first-class method way amd executing richer queries. Rich queries that you could previously only write in SQL or in XQuery, you can now write in the language you work with - C# or VB.NET which can work with any datasource - XML, Relational dB or object dB without a change in the way you query these types.

well differnce between .NET 3.0 and 3.5 - as told by ScottGu – “.NET 3.5 will have a number of new framework library features - including LINQ, new ASP.NET features and controls, built-in ASP.NET AJAX support, new WPF enhancements, and other assorted goodies.”

About Windows Server “Longhorn” 2008 - unofficially its has been completed(check here - ).. cheers to MSFT but still the Beta3 is available for download from this location - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/audsel.mspx

And lastly SQL Server “Katmai” 2008 - i dont know much on the features but it has mostly to do with the Object Databases - Querying and Analysis. SQL Server 2008 R3 is Available for download Developer Edition (x86 and x64)- https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/content/content.aspx?ContentID=5395
(see right hand section, u need to register and then will be able to download)

 Finally heres a Vista gadget that you can use to keep a track of the no of days remaining for the biggest wave of product launch - http://www.wedsg.com/winclient/vistasidebargadget/download.htm