Visual Studio/Visual C++

A junior student gave me a spare free license to use VS/VC++ for 2 years, I've always used codeblock for C# and C++ and Eclipse for JAVA, dunno If I should take this step, mostly because I don't feel like paying a 12k $ license once these 2 years end but is still tempting.
Can you give me a slight insight? Please not hurr durr use emacs/gentoo/etc

>>5
Only includes the 32-bit compiler, also lacks some things like ATL (not such a big deal, but can cause extra work).