Looks like MS is “making VS Studio Express free as in beer”:http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/04/20/free_visual_studio/ permanently.
I wrote up my responses to the free beta “some time back”:http://twasink.net/blog/archives/2004/06/wow_free_visual.html; like I said then, I think this is a really good move for Microsoft, _and_ it’s driven by the quality of the free IDEs for other languages (notably NetBeans and Eclipse for Java).
I am glad they are offering these tools, especially as it will attract developers to their platform.
For those serious about developing more robust applications they will most likely move up to the professional editions.
Either way, I like this move by Microsoft.
Yeah I have been using VS express for a while now, no complaints for what I need it for (about once a month).
However, I am sure the full version VS2005 does NOT have all the soft toyish colours? (or is it just the same as express?). It seems that with express, they want you to think its a toy, and that any real work best be done with something that doesn’t look like playschool