By now you’ve probably heard that Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 has been released. You can download it as a single setup package for both Visual Studio and .NET Framework 3.5, or just for the .NET Framework 3.5. It takes a while to complete the install, so you may want to kick it off at the end of the day, rather than tie up your machine for a few hours.

If you’ve installed any beta stuff (i.e. Silverlight 2 Beta, Framework Source Code perf patch, SP1 Beta) you’ll also need to download and run the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Preparation Tool. The installer will check for these antirequisites and prompt you to run the preparation tool if necessary.

Scott Hansleman has a nice roundup of what Service Pack 1 includes for WinForms, WebForms, and the rest the Framework.

I would particularly encourage any web developers to install SP1, as there are a large number of important fixes and enhancements specifically targeting web development. You can find a nice comprehensive overview of these on the Visual Web Developer Team Blog.