If you've played with Microsoft dot net in the past and even if you haven't; visit:
Visual Basic Express Edition Beta

You should definately give this a try.

It installs easily. Actually I needed 2 tries thanks to another install I was running at the same time on the first try.

There are some really nice improvements over the Visual Studio .net 2003 version such as:

• Way better visual editing for forms. It was a pleasure before and now it is almost effortless.


• The WebBrowser object is wonderful. I can just imagine rafts of new automated browser applications as a result.
  


• Also better deployment which I actually haven't tried yet.


• They promise one click deployment and updates.
  

I'm convinced that the major obstacle to dot net applications has been the complexity and limitations of its deployment capability.

It will be interesting to see how this new version is accepted.  ¶ 10:57 AM