In case you don't know, you can also get the standard edition of the Microsoft VC++ compiler for free if you install the .NET Framework SDK (or even just the redistributable runtime, a 20MB download). It doesn't include the Visual Studio environment, and the optimizations of the professional edition are disabled, but it is a fully functional commandline compiler. The genereated code runs about the same speed as code generated by GCC. It builds Perl just fine.