Free microsoft software for students

Sput · Fri 03 Apr, 2009 11.07

I thought this might be of small amounts of interest to a subset of Metropol if they didn't know: Turns out microsoft is giving away various products for software development including VB, VC++, Visual Studio 05 and also its server 2003 and 2008 products free to students. Looks as though you have to authenticate through your university's website to prove your status but it's fairly straightforward for me at least.

https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx

lukey · Fri 03 Apr, 2009 13.14

Unheard of!

Dr Lobster* · Fri 03 Apr, 2009 13.27

the great irony in this offer is of course that a great deal of students are using this software 'free of charge' already thanks to mr torrent and mr keygen

Sput · Fri 03 Apr, 2009 13.58

TSK @ ME for not remembering that thread. I do apologise lukey. Can I offer you a free copy of server 2008 to make up for it? E-Mail me for instructions on how to obtain it

Neil Jones · Sat 04 Apr, 2009 16.09

Sput wrote:I thought this might be of small amounts of interest to a subset of Metropol if they didn't know: Turns out microsoft is giving away various products for software development including VB, VC++, Visual Studio 05 and also its server 2003 and 2008 products free to students. Looks as though you have to authenticate through your university's website to prove your status but it's fairly straightforward for me at least.

https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx

Visual Studio and SQL Server are freeware for anybody with enough time to download a 2.2Gb ISO. Studio 2005 was free to download... in 2004. Starter Editions of Visual Studio (including VB, Visual C, C++ etc) are free from Microsoft for everybody and in most cases do everything most people want.

Virtual PC has been free for years.

Sput · Sat 04 Apr, 2009 16.18

I don't know about the starter editions not being shite, I came up against those limitations the moment I wanted to not deal solely in shitty text-based serial files. These aren't the starter editions anyway.

lukey · Sun 05 Apr, 2009 08.42

Sput wrote:TSK @ ME for not remembering that thread. I do apologise lukey. Can I offer you a free copy of server 2008 to make up for it? E-Mail me for instructions on how to obtain it

You are forgiven for this shocking lapse in judgement. It is a bit odd that it shot right back to the top of VS's news feed though, seeing as I can't see any substantial changes in the line-up. I don't know if it has anything to do with them rolling it out to more high schools in the States as well....