>>Developer is cheap enough to get just for the tools IMHO.
>
>It is kind of strange (to me) that the free version can be used for production but the one you pay for (even though it is only $50) is not ok for production. I consider using it every day on my PC not as production but rather as development (even though I use the data - like customer records and reports). So my production is not real production. Right now my "test" database is about 6 Gb (judging by the size of the backup). I wonder what is the max Database size of the Developer edition?
>
>Thank you all for your replies.

There is no limit of the size in Developer's edition. R2 version of SQL Server Express is limited to 10GB.

BTW, one important nice feature of Developer's edition - you can use compressed backups. I got about 4 times less compressed backup than regular backup.