I've been very, very busy lately, and my wrists have been hurting (spend over $100 getting a “keyboard manager”). However, among the things I've been doing, I've been involved in a usability study with the Visual Studio team. Basically, we meet over live meeting with my desktop shared, so they can watch how I use Visual Studio. This helps figure out if I'm using the new features correctly, or if the design could be clearer. I like it cause I can make very direct feedback and hopefully improve the product for others! Speaking of feedback, the new default for strings in Whidbey is maroon (at least on the build I just installed) -- I made this suggestion to someone who works in that area about two months ago -- so they ARE listening! :)

Whidbey has a host of new features. So many aspects have been fixed up so when you use it, you just have to say “Oh sweet, that's nice!”. There's been a lot of coverage of the “big” new features, like generics and in C#, refactorings, and that's well deserved. However, there's been a ton of work on the day-to-day stuff as well. The #1 top thing I miss when using Everett is auto-Intellisense, for lack of a better name. In VS2005, Intellisense activates on a single keystroke (most of the time), and the list is complete: even keywords are listed. I think preprocessor directives are the only things not available (I've put in a wish :)). It might not seem like a big deal, but it is definately the top thing I notice line-by-line when working in VS2003. CodeRush (www.devexpress.com) helps a bit, but still doesn't come close to how great Intellisense is in VS2005.