1. Yes, it's VB.net. They've just about disowned VB6 anymore.
2. Yes, completely free. Visual Studio is just about lingua franca for professional programmers, but the open source compilers are beginning to make a dent in their user base, so they're trying to encourage adoption of their technology. Likewise with C#. It's a proprietary language basically, so the only way they can make sure it gets wide adoption is to offer a free version and then hook professionals in with an expanded version with more tools and options. But don't worry about that right now, you won't miss any of the tools
3. Probably not "out of the box", but you can get a download for it if not. Likewise free.