Microsoft has made its highly popular Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition free permanently. Upon their release, the 2005 Express Editions of Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual C#, Visual J#, and Visual Web Developer were to be free for one year. According to Dan Fernandez's blog (Lead Project Manager for Visual Studio Express), Microsoft made this change because of the popularity Visual Studio Express has received from the community. Visual Studio Express has been downloaded over 5,000,000 times since its initial release 5 months ago.
Microsoft has also released new learning material on their MSDN Coding4Fun website.
Download: Visual Studio Express 2005
News source: Microsoft Press Release
