Gates Promises Visual Studio .NET in 30 Days

Speaking at a software developers forum in Prague on Wednesday, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates said that the company's next generation .NET development suite will ship within a month. The product will be launched February 13 at the VSLive Conference in San Francisco, nearly four years after its predecessor.

"The product is in its final stages and will be officially released within the next 30 days," Gates said.

Visual Studio .NET offers an integrated development environment with support for languages such as Visual Basic .NET, C#, C++ and others, which will be made available by third parties. The product is designed to support the creation of Web applications and services which run under the .NET umbrella.

Gates also noted Wednesday that the long-awaited Tablet PC, which runs a special version of Windows XP tuned for handwriting, will ship in late 2002. The Tablet PC is being co-developed with Acer, Compaq, Toshiba, and other companies.