As some may know, I have been working hard to get an understanding of everything out there so that I can to form the basis for our 2012 local based development projects.  I wanted to go down the open source route for everything(I am probably 50/50 split at the moment), but I have to say that the MS tools, the free express versions, coupled with the free education they are providing at the moment are really amazing.

I know it is horses for courses in this game, and I am not saying one set of tools is better than another, but it is a world apart from where they were.  In the old days it was a given that you copied the disks/dvd and started learning until you could afford to buy them.  Then they went through a period that drove new developers away.  They seemed to have learned from their mistakes and are trying to do they best they can (well, I suppose they HAVE to now that google are so big).

Visual studio 2010 express and SQL Server 2008 R2 are top-notch.  They are also bunging everything at developers to get onto WindowsPhone, again I know they have to, but they have gone the extra mile to make it a good place to be.

Anyway, not wishing to sound like an advert (I run Fedora, Ubuntu and Windows here), but check them out if you enjoy that kind of thing.