Easier than Visual Basic 6?

VB.Net is the natural progression of VB6, and has a lot of free tools and resources online to get started. Microsoft even provides a free development environment as well as a free database for development/bundling in your applications.

Check out this website for information and download links on all the free Microsoft software.

Also, you said you tried VB.Net and didn't like it-- I'd be curious to know why? Yes, there's a little learning curve, but the abundance of getting started information on the internet surely can help that. I was a bit overwhelmed by .NET at first (particularly ASP.Net) not seeing the value in switching/learning a new language.

I always felt Microsoft Access was far and away the best for this kind of requirement.

edit - I realize this isn't a politically correct answer. But the total package of a built in DB, a great GUI development package, a great report generator (far superior to crystal reports, for example), the easy development of tables and queries, all put in one friendly package, make it nearly trivial to develop with. For rapid development, it's the best I've used.

FWIW, I do Java, C++, C, VB4/6, ASP, JSP, Perl, PHP, CSS/ DHTML, JavaScript, Pascal, Fortran, Kenemy and Kurtz Basic, BAL, unix shell scripting, Oracle, mySql, RPG III, COBOL, some proprietary stuff, various macros, various distributed technology, Job control language, CPL, etc. etc. I got out of developing in Access because of scalability limitations.

Powerbasic may be to your liking -

http://www.powerbasic.com/