I'm so giddy I'm giggling in my cube. I just got Visual Studio working with the WAMP stack!
I've really come to appreciate Drupal, but I just can't give up Visual Studio. I've tried Eclipse/Aptana. I didn't have much luck getting step debugging working. And then I tried Komodo. For $250, it would be worth it just to have all my Windows comfort. It worked, but I found something better.
VS.PHP is a Visual Studio addin for PHP. It uses a reflection-like (not real reflection because it's not .NET) method to look into referenced code for Intellisense. It also has a built-in Apache-based web server so it can control the debugging process.
And what a debugging process. Full breakpoints and stepping (step into and step over). Plus, it has the familiar Visual Studio real-time value checking by simply hovering over a variable during debugging. It also has the QuickWatch, where you can inspect variables and arrays.
So, set a couple breakpoints, hit F5, and step and inspect like crazy.
So for a hundred bucks, you've got a full development package. I don't know if it works with the free version of Visual Studio, but it does come with a shell if you don't have Visual Studio installed.
Warning: use version 2.7, as the 2.8 RC uses PHP 5.3.
I also downloaded the MySql connector for Visual Studio, which exposes the database in the Server Explorer. More responsive than phpMyAdmin.
If you're comfortable with the free tools, there's no need to change. But I've become spoiled by Visual Studio, and I'm glad there's a path. Plus, the book I'm writing is about integrating Drupal with back-end systems written in .NET. I should be able to develop everything in a single solution.