The vb or vb6.0 used within viqual studio 6.0 is a previous techology, in the vb 6.0 the code is directly compiled into a byte or native code so it its directly tied to the windows win32 platform products developed using with vb6.0 arent protables accros diver platform in addition vb6.0 isn't totaly oriented object then vb6.0 is not easly confortable with network, xml and so forth all those weakness are correted with VB.NET the code is not directly converted to native language it is compiled to intermadiate language called IL so it can run not only under windows but also under linux solaris and other platforms also VB.NET is able to deal with network xml and so forth.

vb : runtime environment, window application, vb.net:CLR environment, web appliction.