Abstract
Microsoft launched Visual Studio 2017 RC on November 16, 2016 and it’s a free trial for all .NET enthusiasts and the developer community. Once a developer downloads the free trial, it's only valid for certain period and this article will help you to learn how to check the validity date of VS 2017 RC.
If you have not installed the Visual Studio 2017 RC yet, then you might want to read my previous article on Installing Visual Studio 2017 RC.
What is the benefit of Free Trial?
Release Candidate is a free trial for developers to try the another latest and greatest features of new IDE and tooling around it; and that gives sufficient time to anyone to learn and try what’s new in that new shiny tool. Then, when you or your organization is ready to upgrade to a paid licensed version, you can continue to use the greatest and latest.
So when this free trial will end?
Unlike Visual Studio Community edition which is a free download, Visual Studio 2017 Developer and Enterprise Editions are free trial.
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Free Download
Visual Studio Community is a "Free Download", so it remains free the whole life time of the application while it’s installed on your machine.
Free Trial
Visual Studio 2017 Professional and Enterprise are "NOT FREE" but offer Free Trial, which means that the trial will end after certain date and then, you will no longer be able to use that product unless you buy or upgrade to a licensed version of that.
Until when is RC Valid ?
Well, usually Microsoft Product Teams know well in advance and work towards releasing the product after few months of RC. But to be sure until when your installed Visual Studio 2017 RC is valid, you can follow the steps below.
- Launch Visual Studio 2017 RC.
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- Go to Help menu and click on “About Microsoft Visual Studio”.
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- From the opened dialog as shown below, click on “License Status”.
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- Now, you will see a dialog, as shown below, where you can clearly see the final date of the end of Free trial.
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