Have you visited the SQL Server 2005 Express Downloads page lately? 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/sql/download/

there are so many great tools that you can download, including Reporting Services and a “Business Intelligence Studio” for designing reports, which really surprised me (since you never could use Reporting Services with the previous free versions of SQL).  Don't forget Books On-Line for SQL 2005 as well.

I am going to start a new series of posts on SQL Server 2005 in the coming weeks, with my usual focus on T-SQL as opposed to Administration and DBA stuff.   There are *lots* of very cool things we can do using the new features in 2005 that make solving many of those “classic” SQL problems very easy.  

So download it and install it already!  It's free!

• SQL Server 2005: CROSS APPLY
• Taking a look at CROSS APPLY
• SQL Server 2005: Specifying Partitions for Aggregate Functions
• SQL Server 2005: Using EXCEPT and INTERSECT to compare tables
• Regular Expression Replace in SQL 2005 (via the CLR)
• More with SQL Server 2005 : Top n Per Group, Paging, and Common Table Expressions
• SQL Server 2005: Using PARTITION and RANK in your criteria
• Lots of great SQL Server 2005 Express Downloads