Technet

[craig1]

My Technet subscription (including the 90 day free extension) is coming to an end and that's it, it's gone.

The freebie offering from MS seems OK but the licenses are 90 day only. Also, there's not the massive library available.

MSDN is just worlds away in cost from the £99 I've been paying for Technet renewal for years now and even then doesn't come with the long software library of the basic Technet.

So... what are people using in its place?

[stek]

My Technet subscription (including the 90 day free extension) is coming to an end and that's it, it's gone.

The freebie offering from MS seems OK but the licenses are 90 day only. Also, there's not the massive library available.

MSDN is just worlds away in cost from the £99 I've been paying for Technet renewal for years now and even then doesn't come with the long software library of the basic Technet.

So... what are people using in its place?

Unix!

[v8gaz]

BizSpark

[craig1]

BizSpark

I don't meet two of the three eligibility criteria. Are they pedantic about it?

[woohoo]

I don't meet two of the three eligibility criteria. Are they pedantic about it?

Yep they can be. What about the MS action pack, I used to have membership a few years ago and was quite good.

[craig1]

Yep they can be. What about the MS action pack, I used to have membership a few years ago and was quite good.

They cut the MSDN software library from this last year and now you just get some freebie Office licenses and MS Dynamics (with no CALs)

[d000hg]

What software do you actually need?

[woohoo]

They cut the MSDN software library from this last year and now you just get some freebie Office licenses and MS Dynamics (with no CALs)

Are you sure, for design and development you seem to get VS2013, SQL Server and Azure credits, action pack.

Just a side complaint, MS have some of the crapiest website pages, nearly impossible to find anything.

[craig1]

What software do you actually need?

Need? Not much. Everything I need is properly licensed.
Want? OS licenses (client and server), Office (Windows and Mac), Project, Visio and so on.

Primary use is for me to experiment with different combinations on VMs, old bits of tin and newer bits when they come into my hands. For example, I just deleted a VM today where I wanted to prove a concept on a fairly unique 16 bit driver running on a legacy XP machine that's due to be killed and replaced by Win7 in a couple of weeks, some people report issues in certain configurations and I wanted to just run it through my own.

I also just killed another VM that I was playing around with trying to get the most locked down Win8 configuration possible but still allow me to do my online banking. Some of the stuff I was doing really wouldn't have been appropriate on a normal machine as it was hard to undo.

A project I've not got around to yet is that I have an ancient old Compaq running XP Tablet as my home security system. Nice and locked down on its docking station in kiosk mode on a bookshelf, permanently on. I wanted to see if Win8's new fondle-GUI works well (if at all) with the Compaq's stencil-tablet screen. If that works then I need to see if my home security software can run on it as well. I need the older version of the security software as it comes with a built-in SMTP server while the newer versions only send the data locally or to to a third party for me to "subscribe" to premium services. I quite like getting email pictures on the beach from my security system when I'm on holiday of my neighbour coming in to water the plants, it's very reassuring...

I also sometimes play with server configs, getting weird and wonderful scenarios working and so on. More of an ongoing learning experience for me whenever my brain fires off a "what if..." scenario that I don't know the answer to. Just searching online for the answer to those off-the-wall scenarios is boring, I like finding it myself occasionally.

On most scenarios I probably could use the 90 day license freebies but they're often not in the variants I want plus sometimes I just like leaving dev VMs built and sitting unused and not having to bother about expiring licenses.

Edit: I liked the Technet simplicity. For example, I downloaded Project 2013, played with it for a while then decided it was the hell-spawn of satan and deleted it. No worries about licensing or anything, I got exactly the variant I wanted and could buy if I decided I liked it.

[lilelvis2000]

Are you sure, for design and development you seem to get VS2013, SQL Server and Azure credits, action pack.

Just a side complaint, MS have some of the crapiest website pages, nearly impossible to find anything.

I'm on the design and dev and have a modest set of tools from MSDN, plus the Office365 and Azure.

Not only is the site rubbish..its dog slow.