SQL Server 2008 rocks!, 2008-10-08 This is great SQL at a great price.
If you are a student at a college or similar school that qualifies for DreamSpark, you might be able to get it free through your school - point your search engine to "Welcome to Microsoft DreamSpark".
In any case it's a great price, and you can use it with the free Express 2008 versions of VB and C# - point your search engine to "C# Express 2008".
LINQ-to-SQL in the 2008 version is so cool. LINQ makes querying a first-class language feature in VB and C#, and LINQ-to-SQL takes it to the big-boy SQL database levels.