It’s been a while since I last posted, so I thought I’d blog about a freebie from Microsoft as my triumphant return to the IT Humidor.
Coming up this month will be the launch of Office 2010, Visual Studio 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, and SharePoint 2010. To kick things off, Microsoft is holding launch-events in various parts of the country. Be a part of the launch of Microsoft’s new products, (and take home free copies of the software,) by signing up for an event in your area. For those of you who can’t make it to a live event, there will also be a live keynote by Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft’s business division on the launch of the new software suites.
There are two paths for each event, IT Pro and Developer:
For IT Professionals, focuses more closely on Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010
For developers, focusing on Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2.
The events are free to sign up for, but space fills up fast.
Now that some of the events have actually happened, did anyone either get real, free product keys or just the same trial versions that can be downloaded by anyone? I can’t imaging a good reason for Microsoft to get cheap in this area – a “free” product costs them less than a snack and is a reasonable “thank you” gift for someone taking a day away from the office to attend what basically is an extended sales pitch.
All the launch events of Microsoft’s I’ve been to sent me home with full, working versions of the software they were pitching. In 2005, I walked away with Visual Studio 2005 Professional and a single-CPU license of SQL Server. For the Vista launch, they gave us full versions of Vista Ultimate, and for the Office 2007/Exchange 2007 launch, we got full versions of Office 2007 Ultimate. I would imagine that this event’s the same, but I’ll know for sure in a few hours when I get over to the event; I’ll report back with the resulting schwag when the event is over here in San Francisco.
Well, after about a week or so of dealing with some things to keep me busy, I can report back that Microsoft did, in fact, cheap out a little bit and gave trial copies of Office 2010 during the event, (I was in the IT professionals track, I don’t know how the developers fared with Visual Studio 2010.)
The majority of our track focused on the new features of SharePoint 2010 and how it interacts with Office 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2.
Oh, we did get a new code for a discount on TechNet Plus: TNITQ402.
The code takes $87.25 off the original price of $349, making the total cost for a new subscription to TechNet $261.25.