As a Visual Basic 6.0 developer you may want to become yourself familiar with the .NET platform before putting it into production (and making the corresponding investments). In this blog post I wanted to give some pointers to commonly used resources that can help you in that regard.
To run one of the latest Microsoft operating systems you can take advantage of the VHD Test Drive program that I blogged about some time ago. Through this program you have access to a large number of OS configurations that you can try out for a limited time. The ones I would recommend to get started are the Windows Vista 30-Day Eval VHD, the Windows Server 2008 Evaluation, and the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition VHD. Remember you need either Virtual PC, Virtual Server or Hyper-V in order to run the virtual machines.
You’ll also need to install Visual Studio 2008, and for this you can either install the Express Editions (which have some limitations, but are free), or a 90-day trial version of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition or Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite. Another alternative is to download a full virtual machine with Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server installed.
Also, to get familiar with specific .NET features, you can take advantage of the free e-book offer and the additional content currently up at Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Learning Portal.