Team Foundation Server branching characteristics, compared to others

Question

What are the branching characteristics of TFS?

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Early Branching/Heavy Branching

If we look at the tools Perforce, Subversion, CVS, for instance, we

Answer 1

Note: the Version Control (ex Branching and Merging) Guide can help here.

In the "Single Dev Team Scenario 2.0.pdf" document of TFS Branching Guide - Lab.zip file, you will see that the creation of a branch is followed by a commit (a checking of all files from the original branch.
The space used is minimized, as described in Isolation for Collaboration page:

When you create a new branch and commit, all of the files in the new branch that are identical to the files in the source branch point to the same content.
The result is that a branch consumes very little additional storage space, and that storage space expands only when the branched file becomes different than the source.
And even when files change, Team Foundation Server employs a differencing engine to analyze changes between files and once again optimize storage space.

So it is heavy branching for TFS2008 (with space optimization).

In TFS2010, branches are first class object and easily separated from simple folders.