Today we released a new build of Avalon to the world (well, anyone subscribing to MSDN)... This build of Avalon runs on Windows XP (and Windows Server 2K3, but not the PDC or WinHEC Longhorn builds)... which is pretty cool. Last night I tried to get C# Express and everything installed so I'd have a cool application available today, but it looks like that didn't happen.

I'll be blogging and writing code on this build for the next couple months (I'm taking most of December off from work, and like the geek I am I intend to write some code!)...

A couple points:

1. This is a "Technology Preview"... translation - rough bits. While I'm willing to install this on my home machine, I don't recommend you put this on your primary development machine. It requires installing a beta build of .NET, etc.
2. You also need a pretty beefy machine to run the bits.
3. This build will run on Windows XP
4. This build will not run on PDC or WinHEC Longhorn builds
5. This is not the final API set, XAML spec, or anything else - this is a "Technology Preview"

I'm super excited by this. Nothing gets me more jazzed than getting bits into customer's hands. Download the build, install it, and give us feedback. You can send feedback through official channels (forums, newsgroups, even your own personal blog!), or you can always just send me mail at: ChrisAn (at) Microsoft (dot) com.