Yesterday, Microsoft announced each of the Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions will be available for free indefinitely.  Originally, the Express Editions were free for just one year following the product release back in November 2005.  However, due to the overwhelming response from customers (the tools have collectively been downloaded over 5 million times) the company has decided to make every VS 2005 Express Edition free forever.  This includes Visual Web Developer, Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++, Visual J#.

Don't let the no-cost fool you.  While each of these products are scaled-down versions of higher-end Visual Studio 2005 editions, they provide an amazing level of power and productivity to hobbyist and non-professional developers.  Each Express Edition is available as a web download ranging in size from 35-70MB so you can grab one (or all) quickly and get started building cool Web and Windows applications today.

Check out the list of new Starter Kits on Dan's blog.  Also, there's a great "Made In Express" contest for Express developers with over $10,000 in prizes.