I'm not sure if you're aware of this fact. Borland is offering a personal edition of their C# Builder for free. For those people intent on familiarising themselves with VS.NET without the cost, you can use Borland's cool emulation facility that is provided as standard with the product.

Link to product
http://www.borland.com/products/downloads/download_csharpbuilder.html

Hope this helps.

:-)