I can’t believe I’ve only just stumbled across this, but Microsoft are now offering a whole bundle of professional software to students for free.
They call it Microsoft Dreamspark, and it’s a website ran by the company. If you’re in post-16 or university education, you can get a hefty chunk of their professional software for free. Being a student myself, this is very handy.
Amongst other things, you can get Microsoft Visual Basic 2010 Pro, Microsoft Expression Studio 4 Ultimate and Windows Server 2008 for free until you finish university.
All you have to do is prove your education. This is relatively easy – if you have an ISIS card, an .edu (or .ac.uk) email address you can activate within a few minutes. If not, you can go through the process of applying for activation from your college or uni. You have to re-activate every year to get continued use of your software, but it’s well worth it.
It’s available in multiple countries, so don’t hesitate to check if you aren’t in the US or UK.
If you are a student computer enthusiast or programmer, head over to www.dreamspark.com and claim your free software!