[piqufoh]

"To complete this tutorial, you need a Windows Azure account"

yeah, right.

[727374]

You only need an azure account if you want to deploy your app, the last step. If you just want to run locally and check out python in VS, you don't need an account.

[vyrotek]

It looks like you could also use Azure WebSites which gives you a free instance.

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/python/tutorials/w...

[niggler]

FYI: there is free azure access as part of bizspark