VB developement news update

Discontinuation of the VBA Licensing Program

Since June 1996, when we first announced the Microsoft® Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) licensing program, we have been offering VBA for licensing to Independent Software Vendors and others who wished to integrate VBA into their own applications. As previously announced, Microsoft does not expect to make significant enhancements to VBA. This does not impact the current support commitments for VBA in any way, and of course, it does not impact any license arrangements that are in force. In particular, this does not impact VBA in Microsoft Office products.

Microsoft is investing its application programmability resources in Microsoft® Visual Studio® Tools for Applications (VSTA) and its companion set of tools, Microsoft® Visual Studio® Tools for Office (VSTO). We encourage you to consider VSTA for new applications that require application programmability technology. Summit Software is Microsoft’s vendor for VSTA licensing. 

As of July 1, 2007, Microsoft will no longer offer VBA distribution licenses to new customers. Existing VBA customers can still purchase additional VBA licenses from Summit Software and Microsoft for existing solutions.

From http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/isv/bb190538.aspx

Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition

Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition or VSTO 2005 SE for short) is a free add-on to Visual Studio 2005 that empowers developers to build applications targeting the 2007 Office system. Developers can now harness the benefits of the 2007 Office system platform and create Office-based solutions using the professional development environment of Visual Studio 2005.

Anyone who has a licensed version of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office or Visual Studio Professional and above (either standalone versions or via an MSDN Premium or Professional subscription) is eligible to download a free copy of VSTO 2005 SE.

From http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905543.aspx

And from the MSDN forum
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2519437&SiteID=1
we can found that VSTO is not included in free Visual Studio Express Edition