I can't speak for the original poster's use case, but wanted to point out that the Microsoft compilers are free (as in beer) anyway. They do charge an arm and

I can't speak for the original poster's use case, but wanted to point out that the Microsoft compilers are free (as in beer) anyway. They do charge an arm and a leg for things like Team Foundation Server or whatever but the fully functional (32 and 64 bit) compilers, linkers, nmake, etc ship with the free Windows SDK. And even most of the useful IDE stuff is available for free in the VS Express editions.