Prior to this release, Consolas was only available on Windows Vista. Of course, this font will look best on Vista, with subpixel ClearType technology, but it also looks ok XP, as long as you use the correct font smoothing.

Here's what the font looks like with the three different smoothing options provided in Windows XP. Yes, the no-smoothing version really looks that bad.

Standard smoothing looks a little better, but not much.

Cleartype looks much better, even on XP.

You can see that the font smoothing makes a huge difference with the new ClearType fonts. To change them go to the Control Panel, select "Display" and then click the "Appearance" tab. Click the "Effects" button from there.

Prior to this release, I was using Andale Mono for Visual Studio. The jury is out as to whether or not I stick with it, as it looks marginally better (albeit larger) on XP than the new ClearType font

Thanks to Piyush for pointing out this new release. Christopher Wille also posted some screenshots, but he doesn't appear to have turned on ClearType.

You can download the Consolas font pack here.