For those of you that haven’t heard about Microsoft TechNet, it is Microsoft’s service for IT Professionals.
It gives you access to over 70 of their core products (sadly no development products) for only £134 ($199) for a years subscription.
You are allowed 10 downloads of each application, but take Windows 7 for example – each Windows 7 licence key can be used 10 times, so that is 100 installs of each version of Windows 7 per year!
The subscription is per user, so you can’t share product keys with others and some of the software is intended for “evaluation purposes only” by companies, but for private individuals using software at home, this doesn’t really apply.
The list of downloadable software is vast and includes:
- Biztalk Server
- Commerce Server
- Content Management Server
- Dynamics
- Exchange Server
- Office
- Outlook
- Project
- Publisher
- SharePoint Server
- SQL Server
- Virtual Server
- Visio
- Windows 7
- Windows Home Server
- Windows Server
- Windows Vista
- Windows XP
The annual subscription fee also gives you unlimited access to the Managed Support Forums, the TechNet Technical Library, some E-Learning Courses and other benefits.
This is an outstanding deal, so if you are in the market for a new copy of Windows or Office, take a look at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/default.aspx and save yourself a shed load of your hard-earned cash. Amazon are selling a single-user licence of Office 2010 Professional alone for £351.41 and Windows 7 Ultimate will cost you another £168.03.
Students should also check out Microsoft DreamSpark and Web Developers would do well to to take a look at the Microsoft WebsiteSpark program.
