Microsoft Offer - Visual Studio Professional Free For 3 Years?

It was already possible for students and teachers to obtain a free version of Visual Studio 2010 Professional but now this Microsoft offer has been extended to a number of other groups. One group being any individual who is thinking about becoming a web developer.
 
The extended Microsoft offer provides immediate download and 3 year license for a huge range of products such as Visual Studio 2010 Professional. This appears to open the door for Visual Studio to just about everyone in the arduino community.
 
To take advantage of the offer you will need to sign up for the free Microsoft WebSiteSpark program. Once you have signed up you will see a big button allowing you sign up for downloads. The big button actually signs you up to the microsoft developer network (msdn) and looks like the following image.
 
   
If possible, use the Web Download option because it is simpler. Otherwise, to the right of each "download link" is a link that will show your personal license key for the selected product (keep it private) http://www.microsoft.com/websitespark/
  
As an alternative, after you have signed up for websitespark, you can logon directly to msdn http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us.
 
After you logon to msdn you will see the "msdn subscriptions" box on the right side of the msdn screen. For more options also notice the "View complete list of available downloads" option.
 

Arduino for Visual Studio

After installation you may optionally install the free Arduino addin for Visual Studio using this download link or by selecting download from the right hand menu bar. The Arduino addin for Visual Studio makes developing arduino faster, easier and more enjoyable.

Visual Studio Gallery

There is also a large gallery of other useful tools for Visual Studio. You can view the Visual Studio Gallery here http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/

Tips & Bits

Debug and power tools coming soon!!

Visual Assist X (VAX) - How to configure Arduino sketches as VAX C++ files. Refactor, Snipets, enhanced syntax colors, examples, suggestions and much much more. Only downside is that it costs $100.

Connect two or more arduinos and spy on the serial communication using visual studio and "Serial Echo"

Apple Mac users might find this xcode site useful

Coming soon! Android and Processing for Visual Studio

How to prevent or remove Visual Studio pch folders

How to configure visual studio color coding for arduino source code

See more Examples

Multiple sketch projects and windows projects can co-exist in a single solution. Fully integrated. F5 Compile and upload (startup project). Build Project, Build Solution