I am a little curious if there are any advantages to either Visual C++ or Dev C++. I have seen serious projects completed on both. Personally I find Dev C++ easier to use, but I thought Visual was the main application for C++.
DevC++ uses MingW (windows gcc port ) as the compiler and Visual C++ uses Microsoft C/C++ compiler. Visual C++ offers ( in its paid version ) the MFC library, which is good (and easy) for development of GUIs by using RAD tools. Dev C++ can be used with similar non proprietary APIs like WxWidgets. With both you can have access to the Windows API, although the free version of Visual C++ does not have resource editors, .rc files.
In the past, developers did not like much how Microsoft handled the C++ standard features in its compilers, however, it seems that these days, its compiler is pretty tied to the ANSI C++/C standards as well as including C99 and even C++0x features.
I like the VS Studio IDE and also like the MFC library. Dev C+ despite being a decent IDE for beginners, in my opinion, cannot rival with VS.