Just hot off the presses - as announced by Dan Fernandez, the Lead Product Manager for Visual Studio Express, all Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions including Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual J#, Visual C++, and Visual Web Developer Express will be free permanently!
This is great news while well expected after the promotional move last year to make the VS Express Editions free for a year and considering Microsoft's direction to provide easier ways for VB6 developers to migrate to .NET
Dan also posted many cool Starter Kits, Demos, How-to Videos - check them out!