>>I am now certain that MSDN is a suitable (though significantly more expensive) alternative to VS.
>
>Jim,
>
>I wrestled with the MSDN Universal Subscription cost for quite a while. My decision to upgrade from the Library subscription came when I started adding up the cost of other programs I need/use: Office (you get the Developer Edition) and Visio. The seemingly high cost becomes a wash when you consider the entire package even though it's a big chunk of change for an independent developer.

I had a Universal subscription for a couple of years before becoming an MVP - the difference in cost between an MSDN Universal and Dev Studio/Visual Studio Entrprise was small, and the extra software and automatic monthly updates to the MS distribution more than covered the cost - between all the OS and Office stuff in addition to the developer tools, and the availability of the MSDN download site, it winds up cheaper to do the MSDN, plus, the option of the foreign language packs (at the time, I was working for a Japanese-owned company) msade it a no-brainer for me.