Beta 1 of Visual Studio is now available on MSDN.  (If you have the appropriate MSDN subscription).  Here is a complete set of screenshots, outlining the installation experience.

Note: I installed VS 2010 Beta 1 on a clean virtual machine running Windows 7 Build 7100 (RC).

We start with the familiar install startup menu:

Then we get a banner page, as things start up.

Next, we get a license page, as well as an overview of what is going to be installed.  The key components are:

• VC 9.0 and 10.0 runtime libraries
• .NET Framework 4 Beta 1    (more info)
• Help 3.0 Beta 1    (more info)
• Visual Studio Macro Tools
• Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 1    (more info)

Next up is an options page:

Now the actual installation begins and we can see a more complete list of all the components that will be installed.  For completeness, here’s the full list:

• VC 9.0 Runtime
• VC 10.0 Runtime
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Beta 1
• Microsoft Help 3.0 Beta 1
• Microsoft Visual Studio Macro Tools
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 1
• Microsoft Web Deployment Tool
• Visual Studio Tools for the Office System 4.0 Runtime
• Microsoft Office Development Tools for Visual Studio 2010
• Dotfuscator Software Services – Community Edition
• Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP1
• SQL Server Compact Tools for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1
• Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0
• Microsoft Sync Services for ADO.NET v2.0
• Microsoft Sync Framework Services v1.0
• Microsoft Sync Framework SDK v1.0
• Microsoft SQL Publishing Wizard 1.4
• SQL Server System CLR Types
• Shared Management Objects
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express Edition

Wow.  This is going to take a while.

You’ll have to reboot after the .NET Framework 4 installation.

Go get a cup of coffee while the remaining components install..

You’ll get a warning dialog, indicating that SQL Server 2008 has compatibility issues on Windows 7 and suggesting that you install SP1.

I just clicked the Run Program button and proceeded with the install.  A little bit later, I got a second compatibility warning dialog, also mentioning SQL Server 2008.  An external DOS window was also spawned, running a setup.exe command.

Finally, everything finishes up and we’re done!

After the install completes, we get the main autorun window again and the link for checking for service releases is now active.

If you click the Check for Service Releases link, you’ll be redirected to an update web page, which in turn allows firing up the Windows Update applet.  When I tried this (29 Jun 2009), no updates were found.

Finally, we bring up Visual Studio 2010 for the first time.

As with earlier versions, when you start Visual Studio for the first time, you’re asked to choose a language, which dictates how the environment is set up.  I’m a C# guy.

When things finally start up, we see the new Start Page for the first time.

The New Project dialog also gets a fresh look.

Finally, we create an empty WPF Application.