Whidbey, or ASP.NET 2.0 / Visual Studio 2005, should be available as a full release in about a year, give or take a couple of quarters.  The first beta is due in June 2004, and a second beta will likely follow before the end of the year.  When the second beta comes, it is widely anticipated that it will include a 'Go Live' license like the second beta of ASP.NET 1.0 carried, and many organizations will begin hosting production sites on the beta bits (as many did on ASP.NET 1.0 Beta 2).  With the wealth of new features, many of which eliminate effort that must be expended on virtually every web application built using 1.x code, it will definitely provide a competitive advantage for organizations to move to 2.0 quickly.  The learning curve is nothing compared to moving to 1.0 from legacy ASP, and the productivity enhancements are huge.  In this article, I've only scratched the surface of what is coming in 2.0, and hopefully my enthusiasm for this new release of ASP.NET is evident.