can older versions of VB be downloaded for free?

Hi.please forgive if the Q was already posed earlier but I am new and can't read all the threads on here,it will take 1 month.
As I want to start with VB but Vb 6.0 costs about 1000 US dollars(I am italian)and this is too much,as I don't even know if I like Vb,is there any way to download even older versions for free?if yes,where?I mean legal things,so,if Microsoft allows it.Cos the price discourages me.Thanks for helping me out

Not to my knowledge, however if you buy a book on VB6 from either the Microsoft Press or from an approved author, then they will often come with a free "educational" version of VB.

There are no free downloads from MS that I know of.

There are student and academic versions in the US that are sold at reduced rates. Now that VB6 is out of date you may be able to find a "used" legal copy for a reasonable price.

Also you must be looking at the Enterprise edition, and you may not need those features. There is also a Professional version and a basic version that were a lot cheaper.

Microsoft has a version called a Control Creation Edition, CCE for short. YOu can download it for free and install it. The only thing it lacks is the ability to compile your project into an exe file. Go to the microsoft website, go to downloads, then search for CCE. it should come up. Download and install. There are help files that come with it. It's actually quite good, and similar to VB6.

Good luck.

i think the CCE is based on VB5, so there will be a few differences to VB6, but the general 'feel' of programming is the same, ie, it will be good for learning VB, and to see if you like it.