PyEphem on winXP

[jbattat at cfa.harvard.edu]

Hi,

I'm a (sort of) newbie to python and would like to install the PyEphem
extension to Python.  I'm using Python 2.4
I obtained PyEphem from:
  http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/projects/pyephem.html

When i ran python setup.py install my error was:
  "error: Python was built with version 7.1 of Visual Studio, and
extensions need to be built with the same version of the compiler, but
it isn't installed"

Browsing this group led me to the following URL where I could get (for
free) the Visual C++ Toolkit 2003:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=272BE09D-40BB-49FD-9CB0-4BFA122FA91B&displaylang=en

However I still see the same error when running
  python setup.py install.
I know that Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 is the same as version 7.1, but is
this the same as Visual Studio 7.1?

If so, can Visual Studio 7.1 be obtained for free?
If not, is there a workaround?

I've seen suggestions in the group that you can recompile Python 2.4
using MinGW or some other c compiler.  I'd be willing to do that, but
do not know how to go about recompiling python.  Advice on this would
also be helpful. 

Thanks,
James