Direttamente dal blog di Martin Woodward un interessante articolo che ci spiega la reale differenza tra Checkout e Get Latest in Team System, SourceSafe e PVCS.

"If you are using the source control features in Team System then checkout means “Tell the server I want to edit this file and mark that file as writeable in my file system”, at the same time that you check-out the file you also get an option to lock the file using one of three lock types (none, check-out and check-in)."