Obtaining Microsoft VC Tools and MASM

	VC Express Edition	Premium software development tools for developing current applications for 32 bit Windows which are free to use for private development, hobbyist projects and commercial applications. The latest .NET technology is included which is a necessary component for the VC2005 binary tools.
	Minimum OS Version	Win2000 SP4 and later.
	Installation Options	If you have the bandwidth it is good value to download the complete ISO image available as it allows you to reinstall the VC Express Edition if you damage, upgrade or re-install your OS version. This is the link for the direct ISO downloads. Alternately you can use the internet installation and select the option that best suites your requirement. This is probably a good choice if you have limited bandwidth as you can select the option that does not include the IDE which reduces the download to about 93 megabytes. If you already have your own editors and programming environments set up and don't want to change these, you can install the Express Edition without the IDE so that the complete set of binaries are installed into your system without effecting the file associations you already have in place.
	MASM Version 8.0	The most current version of ML.EXE the Microsoft Macro Assembler.
	Installation Requirement	To install MASM version 8.0 you must have a working version of the VC Express Edition installed on your machine.
	Licence Limitations	At the time of writing the MASM Version 8.0 addin for the Express Edition is licenced only for non-commercial uses and the licence specifically prohibits using it to create software for commercial applications or enterprise usage. This may be subject to change in the future so that the licence has the same conditions as the VC Express Edition. If you have need to use MASM for a commercial application you can either use the version from a commercial VC release, a version from a Device Development Kit or an upgraded release version of MASM. In each instance you will need to understand the EULA attached to the version you wish to use.