Free Microsoft software for Students

If you are a student at a major university or college, you can get Visual Studio Professional (2005 or 2008) Windows Server 2003, and some other less interesting software for free from Microsoft. The website is https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/. It was relatively painless to sign up. Supposedly you can only install each program once before the CDKEY expires, but once is enough for me. The give-away is clearly meant to encourage CS students to learn and later, recommend Microsoft programs. I happen to really like Visual Studio, so I don't mind the bribe at all.

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