VS2010 Upgrade Edition - is it an “upgrade” from express legitimate?

Question

I read from an unreliable source that buying the VS2010 Upgrade Edition (as opposed to a full retail) is a valid licensing route when the "upgrade" from VS Express is (free). Can anyone confirm or deny this?

thanks

Answer 1

It looks like this is true :

Before the purchase

The right to upgrade with any previous version of Visual Studio or any other developer tool.

Visual Studio 2010 Professional includes a 12-month MSDN Essentials subscription. MSDN Essentials gives you access to the main Microsoft platform: Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise R2 and Microsoft Datacenter for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2.

Special Information for Experienced Users If you use a trial version of Visual Studio Professional and you buy Visual Studio 2010 Professional Update, you can use the product key that you get on the receipt page to convert your trial version to the full version.

This suggests that you can upgrade any competing product or any existing version of Visual Studio, even the trial version. It does not explicitly mention the Express version, but you can always install a trial version and update it.

Answer 2

I sell software and do not want to violate the license agreement. So, I talked with an MS representative (and had a chat log), then called the license number and received the same message from both. The upgrade license is valid from ANY previous version (including express). I specifically asked about this more than once, and they told me that everything was in order.