I hope nobody minds too very much if I inject just a little bit of reality here: we are just about the only profession/trade/occupation on the planet that seems to believe that our tools should be free (as in beer). Carpenters, mechanics, hairdressers, even window-washers all have to pay for their tools (and the associated supplies and tool maintenance), and most of them don't get anything like the ROI that a door-to-door ASP.NET site peddler would get pounding the pavement in downtown Lesser Podunk after buying the ultimate all-in version of VS. Maybe it's time we dropped the entitlement attitude.
>>we are just about the only profession/trade/occupation on the planet that seems to believe that our tools should be free (as in beer).
That is because software development tools like all other software is just data, once written and debugged. Data can be copied at zero cost, which can not be said about physical tools, at least for now.
