The controls available for forms in Access are explicitly intended to be
used with data being returned from databases. While there were some bound
controls available in VB, they weren't nearly as good, and so it took a lot
longer to develop applications using VB than Access. While the bound
controls available in .Net (which all the Express languages are) are better,
empirical experience shows that it's significantly faster to develop in
Access.

An additional benefit of Access is that it has very robust reporting
capabilities. Creating reports in .Net is a lot of work.

Hopefully others will pipe in with their experiences.

I think it is important to define the type of application we're discussing.
There are types of application for which Access is the best choice, and
there are types of application for which .NET is the best choice. How and by
whom the app will be developed is also a factor.

Access, in my opinion, remains the best choice for the type of application
for which Access has traditionally been used - a front-end Windows desktop
application to a database, running on a LAN, developed by a single
developer. .NET is a good choice for Web apps, for mobile apps, and for
distributed apps, and for development efforts in which the work must be
divided and coordinated among a large group of developers.

I'm not suggesting that Access can *only* be used in the conditions I
describe above. In between those two ends of the spectrum there is, of
course, a wide 'gray area' where the pros and cons have to be carefully
balanced and judgements made.

Whether you use VB.NET or C# or both for .NET development is mostly a matter
of personal preference. I personally prefer C#, but I'd have a hard time
trying to explain why. C# feels more 'elegant' to me, but there isn't
anything I need to do that couldn't be done in VB.NET.