I couldn't find any posts about this, so here is a link for those who are interested:

Free Visual C++ Command Line Tools (http://www.winprog.org/tutorial/msvc.html)

One thing to keep in mind is that this compiler does virtually no optimization (just like the one in Visual C++ Standard edition).

Unless you very specifically need Visual C++'s compiler for compatibility (source code or .lib format compatibility), you're probably better off with another free C++ compiler that does do some optimization, such as the Borland C++ compiler, Digital Mars, or gcc/MingW.

I agree completely. Just letting everyone know is all :)

I'm curious about something - and this question goes out primarily to Blitz 3D programmers.

I own and have worked with Visual Studio 6 (C++) but have never worked with the .Net environment.

Are these downloads enough to give you the .Net framework, e.g. to run Michael R's Blitz Preprocessor or the Protean IDE (which I'm curious about)?

Every bench I saw on the internet show that visual c++ compiler make the fastest program on windows (pretty complete and recent bench).
On linux that's intel compiler (good for mmx and sse).
Gcc is very good overall.

But you don't choose compiler just on optimization...

Visual C++ is good because of its very good debugger, its good GUI, not for his compiler (don't respect C++). That's why it's free...