You can can download and use the free Visual Studio
express editions of Visual Web Developer 2010, Visual Basic 2010, Visual C#
2010 and Visual C++. These express editions are available completely for
free (and never time out).
You can buy
a new copy of VS 2010 Professional that includes a 1 year subscription to
MSDN Essentials for $799. MSDN Essentials includes a developer license of
Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, SQL Server 2008
DataCenter R2, and 20 hours of Azure hosting time. Subscribers also have
access to MSDN’s Online Concierge, and Priority Support in MSDN Forums.
Upgrade prices from previous releases of Visual Studio are
also available. Existing Visual Studio 2005/2008 Standard customers can
upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 Professional for a special $299 retail price
until October. You can take advantage of this VS Standard to Professional
upgrade promotion here.
Web developers who build applications for others, and who
are either independent developers or who work for companies with less than 10
employees, can also optionally take advantage of the Microsoft
WebSiteSpark program. This program gives you three copies of Visual
Studio 2010 Professional, 1 copy of Expression Studio, and 4 CPU licenses of
both Windows 2008 R2 Web Server and SQL 2008 Web Edition that you can use to
both develop and deploy applications with at no cost for 3 years. At the
end of the 3 years there is no obligation to buy anything. You can sign-up for
WebSiteSpark today in under 5 minutes – and immediately have access to the
products to download.