Quan To, who runs the VS2005 Setup Issues and Workarounds Blog, informs us of the final build numbers for Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0.

• VS2005 = 8.0.50727.42
  


• .NET Framework 2.0 = 2.0.50727.42
  

That matches up with what my sources told me two weeks ago when I was investigating rumors about build numbers and early releases. I'd expect .NET 2.0, VS2005, and SQL Server 2005 to go gold (RTM) any day now. Say that happens before the end of the week... then I'd expect RTM builds available for download on MSDN before the end of next week. While some people have said that we'd be able to download it on October 14th (come and gone... no bits), I'm not anticipating any more than a 72 hour head-start before the Monday, Nov. 7, 2005 launch date.

Can't wait to get access to the RTM bits. Hopefully, lots of MS teams building frameworks for the Vista wave will start releasing bits compatible with the RTM build soon.