In my last post about free software from Microsoft there were 2 ways of getting the goodies, but both of them needed some pre-requisites. Microsoft has had a program called DreamSpark with which it gives away free software, the good news is that Billy G while in India today announced the program to be extended to Indian students with pretty much no pre-requisite other than they being a student.
Yup, all you now need to do is take your college id to a Microsoft Partner Center (NIIT etc.) ,show them your college id and collect the stuff! This what you are entitled to:
- Visual Studio 2008 (Professional)
- Windows Server 2003
- SQL Server 2005 (Developer Edition)
- Microsoft Expression Studio
- XNA Game Studio 2.0
- Visual Studio 2005 (Professional)
- Visual C# 2005 (Express)
- Visual C++ 2005 (Express)
- Visual Basic 2005 (Express)
- SQL Server 2005 (Express)
- Visual Web 2005 (Express)
- Visual J# (Express)
- Microsoft Virtual PC
Huge list. All you need to do is:
- Visit any of MS partner locations. (Go here, scroll to the bottom of the page, select your city and find.)
- Show your college identity card to collect your DVD containing the software.
- Go to ‘Get Verified’ and enter the 25 digit verification key mentioned on the DVD
- You may be prompted to sign in using a Windows Live Id. This step will associate the verification key to your Live Id.
- and complete the verification process.
- Download the relevant License Keys from the world wide DreamSpark website.
PS: If your college is part of IEEE then you can see a method given in the previous post.
~Enjoy!