When we first started to lean technology it was always an uphill struggle; Employees expected us to know tools such as Rational Rose, Oracle and say Visual Studio Enterprise - however with the cost of these tools running into the tens of thousands of pounds clearly this was never going to be a realistic option.
Now Microsoft has done somthing about this (rather than letting people download cracked versions) and has setup the Start up Zone - for students and other people that need access to Enterprise level tools.
At present the software they have on offers is as follows:
- Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition
- Visual Studio 2008
- Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition
- SQL Server Express Edition
- SQL Server Compact Edition
- SQL Server 2008
- Windows Server 2003 R2
- Windows Small Business Server
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM
- Microsoft Dynamics GP
- Office Live Basic Edition
- Windows Embedded CE
- Windows XP Embedded
- Windows Embedded for Point of Service
- Microsoft Popfly
- ASP.net Downloads
- Microsoft Search Server Express
- XNA Game Studio Express 1.0
- Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
By the way, if you dont know what most of these are, then you probably wont need them! However if you are currently or about to start, a Computer Science degree or Microsoft Certification then you probably will.
You can access the Microsoft Startup Zone and its unique setup of downloadable software here: http://www.microsoftstartupzone.com/Software/Pages/Try_a_Product.aspx
