When I worked at The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, I remember a discussion regarding the difference between IBM and MIcrosoft. 

IBM can get you from point A to point B and take care of you all through the trip.  You can be in first class on a plane, a private plane, limo, a beautiful yacht, or some other easy way to travel.  The problem is ultimately that point B is a deserted island that no one wants to go to.  Its covered with ice and has no life what so ever on it.  Microsoft has point B on a beautiful island.  It has no airport, runway, boat dock, bridge, and is surrounded by sharks and jellyfish.

Dear Microsoft, you are making the journey to Visual Studio 2010 way too hard.  When we open a solution in VS2010 it won't load again in VS2008. The ASPInsiders have presented several options that can be done right now to fix the problem.  Unfortunately, you have decided that you will not look at how to have Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 work together inspite of the multiple options that have been presented.  A number of your customers are going to be disappointed.  Its going to be hard for developers with multiple people on a team as well as single developer teams.

In a relationship, if one side continually says no, you really don't have a relationship.  I've called out a number of features that don't work as I expect them to or changes in the VS.NET product that are unwelcome. Given the lack of response I've gotten on a number of things, I've come to the conclusion that the feedback from some members of the ASPInsiders is not being taken seriously any more.  Microsoft has gotten the feedback that this is an issue for a year. I don't know what happened when the first person brought this up, but I know the response I got was that there was to be no "fix."  Given the intensity of the feedback within the ASPInsiders, I would have thought that MS would have reacted to that feedback differently.  They have decided not to.  I'm very disappointed in their response to this issue.  I had a discussion just this past week where I defended MS about they're listening to customers.  Unfortunately, I was wrong. 

I have never understood why they don't want to listen on this issue.  The options that are presented are doable now.  They are not great, but they will solve the problem.  Why the dig the heels in  and "no, no, no" response, I don't understand.  Given that Visual Studio 2010 really isn't compatible with .NET 2, 3, and 3.5, I won't use it for existing applications.  I'll use it for new applications only.

BTW, I don't consider this an NDA violation.  VS2010 RC with a go-live license is now available.  The feature set is public. This is discussion, and speculation, about a feature Microsoft has stated won't be in the product.  This lack of a feature is why I did not do a "My life with Visual Studio 2010" series on my blog.

PS. I don't hate Visual Studio.  I'm not planning on quitting it.  I'm just not overly excitted about VS2010 as a place for running my apps that are VS2008.  I like .NET.  I'm no longer the Visual Studio fanboy. I'm going to be looking at alternatives like MonoDevelop and Sharp Developer.