Microsoft didn't like it when someone made a plugin for Visual Studio express, yet are now opening up the IDE for everyone use?

I don't think so!

What MS _don't_ seem to be offering is a cross-platform IDE for a full range of languages with a good choice of developer tools from a wide range of vendors.

How do I work with Java (MyEclipse) or my Oxygen XML editor, for example?

Where's the Ruby integration? How about Google Web Tools?

I'll need a _lot_ more than this to make me switch from Eclipse!

Maybe if eclipse wasn't such an unstable pita or if scite were actively developed I would give you this one but they aren't I don't give a damn about visual studio but I doubt it's feeling that much pressure from the people that use it.

I agree about Eclipse - it's not stable enough. VS is reasonably solid (although not as rock solid as VS6 was).