Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, has released what was supposed to be the February Visual Studio "Orcas" CTP as the March Orcas CTP. They released it late on February 28th, which is typical for something they promised in February; I couldn't actually download it until late on March 1st because of server congestion, which is also typical of a new download-only release. In addition to more of Orcas, t There are four download options here, but picking the right one(s) for your needs might be tricky. I have downloaded 2 of the 4, and run them briefly. Let me give you enough information to help you decide what you want for yourself.All of the downloads are broken into pieces compressed in RAR format. The first piece is an EXE that unpacks itself and all the other pieces. The Virtual PC downloads require a version of Microsoft Virtual PC to be installed, along with the Orcas Base Image.Let me start with the ones I haven’t downloaded. Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” – March Community Technology Preview (CTP) (Self-extracting Install)This download adds an Orcas VS installation to a real computer. It has 7 parts to download, six of 700 MB each and one 433 MB. It isn’t recommended for installation on production machines. It requires either Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP, and 1 GB of physical RAM.Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” – March Community Technology Preview (CTP) (Team Foundation Server – Self-extracting Install) This download adds an Orcas TFS installation to a real computer. It has 2 parts to download, one 700 MB and one 160 MB. It isn’t recommended for installation on production machines. It requires Windows Server 2003 and 1.5 GB of available physical RAM.And now the ones I have downloaded. Both are Virtual PC images, and both will force you to change the administrator password when they start up. Both will try to update themselves; I allowed this.Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” – March 2007 Community Technology Preview (CTP) This download creates a Virtual PC image that contains Orcas VS, Orcas TFS, Visual Studio 2005, MSDN Library for Orcas, .NET Framework SDK 2.0, and both SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2005 Express running on Windows Server 2003. It has 9 parts to download, eight 700 MB and one 656 MB. It requires Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, or Windows XP, and says it needs 1 GB of available physical RAM; experimentally, it needs a little more than that. This virtual PC image comes set to use 1 GB of virtual RAM and has its undo disks enabled. Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” – March 2007 Community Technology Preview (CTP)While this has the same title as the previous download, it is a different link. This download creates a Virtual PC image that contains Orcas VS, MSDN Library for Orcas, .NET Framework SDK 2.0, and SQL Server 2005 Express running on Windows Server 2003. It has 7 parts to download, six 700 MB and one 256 MB. It requires Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, or Windows XP, and says it needs 1 GB of available physical RAM; experimentally, it only needs 512 MB of available physical RAM. This virtual PC image comes set to use 384 MB of virtual RAM and has its undo disks disabled. I’ll have more to say about my experience with the many new features released with the March Orcas CTP in future postings. Software Development