Here is a quick and dirty tutorial to get your hands wet with the spatial features in SQL Server 2008.  There is an assumption that you have installed the SQL Server 2008 February 2008 CTP.

First - Download a sample database to play with.  You can download the sample database from here.

Second - Extract the two files somewhere on your hard drive.

Third - Attach the mdf to Sql Server 2008.

Fourth - Right click on the feature (uscounties) and select "Select Top 1000 Rows".

Fifth - Download the following tool from Morten's Blog to view the data (Download).  This is a very cool utility (Thanks Morten!)

There are 4 steps to follow.  Click on the image to increase the image size.

Cheers,

Carlos