The visual studio tools are like drug dealers giving out free samples.
It ties you to the platform because they use .NET
It ties you to the platform because they use .NET
That's a little biased, isn't it? I hardly think you can compare .NET to drugs.
.NET is just a big library of useful functions. Of course, .NET is not cross-platform (and I don't use it at all, even though I use Visual C++ 2005), but that's something the developer has to consider when choosing what libraries to use (please do not get "library" this mixed up with "IDE" or "compiler"!)
What about Blitz3D's trial? It definitely got many of us "tied" to game programming. But you don't compare that to a drug sample, do you?
Seriously, any programming language will tie you to something (GCC, Visual C++, Borland C++, etc.), it simply depends on what you prefer being tied to. Some people prefer keeping away from .NET due to it's non cross-platform nature, while others are less interested in porting to mac/linux, and that's fine with me.