You can download it from Microsoft directly, by consulting KB Article 132084

That's a fairly old and crappy version of nmake. For building perl modules it will mostly work - but there are exceptions (eg PDL) for which a more recent version of nmake is required.

I think the reliability of that version of nmake is a much bigger worry than the alpha status of Strawberry Perl.

any version of MSVC released this decade or thereabouts will be just fine

Well .... if you want to use a Microsoft Compiler with ActiveState Perl, then the best one to use is version 6.0 - since that's the compiler used to build ActiveState Perl. All later Microsoft Compilers use a different runtime library - and that is something that can bite you. Otoh the MinGW compiler uses the same runtime library as MSVC-6.0 - which is one thing in its favour when it comes to getting a free C compiler to use with ActiveState Perl.

When I look at the questions the OP has asked, I can't help but wish he had simply installed Strawberry Perl to begin with. It gives you the make (dmake) utility and the C compiler - nothing to configure, and no questions to ask. All you really then need to do is install the ppm module from CPAN and you also have immediate access to the wide range of ppm packages - for any modules that you have trouble building. It just doesn't get any simpler ...

Cheers,
Rob