joejoejoe,

As ArC said, choose any project type except .Net project (win32, MFC, ATL, etc) and it won't reference .Net in any way.

As for reasons to use VC++ 2003 over VC++ 6, as I posted in another thread, this was posted by Stan Lippman (Author of Essential C++, C++ Primer, etc, and one of the lead developers on the VC++ compiler) on his blog:

"I have a beef with some folks out there. I have spent 3 years now within the Visual C++ team. We have a dozen exceptional compiler folks – it's too bad you don’t know them, because you would be very impressed with them – their knowledge, their passion. And yet 3 years of their work on our C++ compiler – in terms of performance, in terms of correctness, in terms of robustness – oh, and in terms of the language itself – is being dismissed by our rogue group of folks who, in an emotional protest against what they must see as an attack on C++, refuse to move from Visual C++ 6, which was fine when it was released, but isn't any longer fine. you shouldn't be using it. anymore. And they persist, and you can't talk to them, because either they are angry or they are really angry. But the bottom line is, we've poured our blood into the gosh-darn compiler. we have at least a hundred people working every day to make it better. no one else in the world cares about C++ more than we do. I know, that sounds so absurd. but that's the truth of the landscape right now. whatever Microsoft may have been in the past – and people always have stories about it. Did I tell you the one where the guy from Microsoft calls Bjarne up at home and tells him that if he doesn't make the language left recursive look ahead 1 they wouldn't go ahead with a c++ compiler. who would want to work for a company like that? I mean, you'd like to see them fail. So we all have a lot of bad feelings about Microsoft. But I think a lot of that is in the past. certainly, for me, this is a very creative and genuine place to work. I spent 1.5 working on the firebird sequence of fantasia and that was all I cared about work-wise. that is what I thought about all the time. well, the people here think about C++ all the time. it's so weird. Jeff Peill knows the language better than I do now. And these Visual 6 guys don't get it. We've poured our blood into these releases. You're just being stubborn. Compilers are works in progress. you don't want to keep using an old compiler. it's not safe. it's not good for the programmers or the business. Well, that's my beef with folks – or some folks. I really have no patience with them. I'm sorry if I've offended them."

In short, from the man behind the VC++ compiler, stop using VC++ 6!

See also:
hxxp://blogs.msdn.com/branbray/archive/2003/11/11/51012.aspx
hxxp://blogs.msdn.com/hsutter/archive/2003/11/17/53495.aspx