Free Microsoft software for College Students

Pixel_Outlaw · Post by **Pixel_Outlaw** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 11:05 pm

Looks like Microsoft is giving away free and complete software for college students.

https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx

Stormwatch · Post by **Stormwatch** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 11:21 pm

The first hit is always free.

Vexorg · Post by **Vexorg** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 11:30 pm

This is nothing new. They had a similar program (called the MSDN Academic Alliance) back when I was taking classes at the local community college that allowed free noncommercial use of Visual Studio and other products for students in an IT-related program (which I was at the time.)

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 12:16 am

I thought VirtualPC already was free.

Mainly I'd like a free upgrade from Vista to Win7, plsthx

Ex-Cyber · Post by **Ex-Cyber** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 12:28 am

Vexorg wrote:This is nothing new. They had a similar program (called the MSDN Academic Alliance) back when I was taking classes at the local community college that allowed free noncommercial use of Visual Studio and other products for students in an IT-related program (which I was at the time.)

With MSDNAA, the school pays an annual fee for that "free" software.

Cthulhu · Post by **Cthulhu** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 12:42 am

My university's computer science dept had that, we actually got quite a bit of stuff free. They didn't really advertise it for whatever reason. It was sorta nice, but at the same time I was already moving away from Windows. It didn't keep me interested in MS-land, I left and moved to the shiny world of Mac before I graduated.

kengou · Post by **kengou** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 1:34 am

Ed Oscuro wrote:I thought VirtualPC already was free.

Mainly I'd like a free upgrade from Vista to Win7, plsthx

I've heard they actually will do that, providing you have the ultimate edition or whatever the most expensive one is.

As to this topic, most schools already provide this for free or at least at a heavy discount. I still use Open Office because it's open source and NOT made by microsoft. Anyway, MS wants people to continue to rely on microsoft products, because the only way they make so much money is market domination. If college kids learn MS office, they'll probably keep using it and paying for it in the future. MS does the same thing for development software like visual studio, because they want more developers using microsoft products and developing FOR microsoft platforms.

I really don't like MS, can you tell?

/rant

Cthulhu · Post by **Cthulhu** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 6:10 am

kengou wrote:I still use Open Office because it's open source and NOT made by microsoft.

I used OO for a while, and while it's great for a free program... I think it still pales compared to real MS Office in pretty much every way. Can't beat the price though.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 9:12 am

OO got better with release 3. Mainly support for file types is much better.

Plus, nice small install size for a full-featured suite that does pretty much everything the Office suite does. 150 MB is probably the size of just Word alone

The new MS Word has the menu "ribbon," which actually isn't a bad feature, but beyond that, don't see much that I would pay for when OO is out there.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 9:13 am

kengou wrote:
Ed Oscuro wrote:I thought VirtualPC already was free.

Mainly I'd like a free upgrade from Vista to Win7, plsthx
I've heard they actually will do that, providing you have the ultimate edition or whatever the most expensive one is.

Actually I did buy a copy of Ultimate ($30 extra for super deluxe games? PLZ!!) although I'd wish they would do that for my laptop (Home "Premium" argh). I guess this WinXP machine is going to stay XP for a while, although I could finally install Home Premium on it, maybe. It shouldn't slow down my machine and I'm getting tired of XP breaking itself constantly.

kengou · Post by **kengou** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 2:35 pm

Cthulhu wrote:I used OO for a while, and while it's great for a free program... I think it still pales compared to real MS Office in pretty much every way. Can't beat the price though.

For students at least, there's very little that you need to do that Office can do and OO cannot do. I've never had a problem doing whatever I needed with OO. Maybe for hardcore business use it doesn't do everything you might need, but for normal use it's fine. And as you mentioned, as far as price-per-features goes, you can't beat OO.

null1024 · Post by **null1024** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 3:29 am

Ed Oscuro wrote:OO got better with release 3. Mainly support for file types is much better.

Plus, nice small install size for a full-featured suite that does pretty much everything the Office suite does. 150 MB is probably the size of just Word alone

The new MS Word has the menu "ribbon," which actually isn't a bad feature, but beyond that, don't see much that I would pay for when OO is out there.

If OO was fast [OO Impress had epic amounts of lag + dropped frames on displaying the animations in some of my presentations... made on an ancient machine with PowerPoint 2000], it'd be useful.
Also, the ribbon sucks. It looks, but doesn't feel nice.

Ex-Cyber · Post by **Ex-Cyber** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 4:03 am

I find both Word and OO.o Writer pretty annoying - performance issues, inconsistent UI, file formats that change every release, and an irrepressible urge to "correct" things that I deliberately typed "wrong" (great for English papers; not so much for lab reports with technical jargon, unit abbreviations, etc.). Lately I've been getting acquainted with LaTeX, which seems to be much more suited to people with any programming or HTML background (and the output generally looks awesome, especially if you need equations).

iatneH · Post by **iatneH** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 4:40 am

Ex-Cyber wrote:Lately I've been getting acquainted with LaTeX, which seems to be much more suited to people with any programming or HTML background (and the output generally looks awesome, especially if you need equations).

Agreed, LaTeX is one of the greatest things ever. I've never had to make my own template though, I have just been using whatever is provided by the conference organisers. Still, just type in the content and the output looks perfect (nearly) right off the bat.

Cthulhu · Post by **Cthulhu** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 7:16 am

iatneH wrote:
Ex-Cyber wrote:Lately I've been getting acquainted with LaTeX, which seems to be much more suited to people with any programming or HTML background (and the output generally looks awesome, especially if you need equations).
Agreed, LaTeX is one of the greatest things ever. I've never had to make my own template though, I have just been using whatever is provided by the conference organisers. Still, just type in the content and the output looks perfect (nearly) right off the bat.

We used LaTeX for some of our research papers... I found it to be a bear to work with for anything beyond even the most basic formatting. Yes, it does look nice off the bat (if you don't want anything fancy), and the support for mathematical equations is still the best, but I think the whole thing needs a nice shiny coat of modern-user-friendliness.

I don't think the core of LaTeX is bad (well, I think the font management is wretched, but that's because it's a product of a time when typefacing on computers was nearly impossible), but I think something could be done to make it easier to work with. LYX tries pretty hard, but it's not quite there yet either.

Pixel_Outlaw · Post by **Pixel_Outlaw** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 7:33 am

Yeah word processing is pretty much for the everyone. I wouldn't mind the professional version of Visual Studio however.

Jockel · Post by **Jockel** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 2:47 pm

Stormwatch wrote:The first hit is always free.

It's not like it's easy to get addicted to Microsoft software

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 3:16 pm

also: lol, Virtual PC doesn't do DirectX. So much for that!

Cthulhu · Post by **Cthulhu** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 3:25 am

Ed Oscuro wrote:also: lol, Virtual PC doesn't do DirectX. So much for that!

A few VM systems support DirectX to some extent, but none of them do it very well. It's a big problem if you're trying to run Vista <insert Vista cracks here> because the Aero interface requires it. <insert more Vista cracks here>

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 4:09 am

I don't use Aero anyways :)