Visual Studio 2008

[JJ]

Perhaps its the best way, but not the cheapest, assuming that the final
product will cost about half that (and that I can upgrade so it'll be
cheaper again I hope).

With MSDN do you get operating systems (e.g. Vista) that are not time
limited? Could be handy for testing, but I'm not going to the effort of
installing vista if it expires in 120 days.....

 

[Leon Mayne]

Perhaps its the best way, but not the cheapest, assuming that the final
product will cost about half that (and that I can upgrade so it'll be
cheaper again I hope).

With MSDN do you get operating systems (e.g. Vista) that are not time
limited? Could be handy for testing, but I'm not going to the effort of
installing vista if it expires in 120 days.....

Check the page I posted:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/vstudio/aa718657.aspx
The extra tools you get are well worth the money. Nothing is time limited.
You do get operating systems, but you'll have to check the licencing terms,
as I believe you are only allowed to use them for development purposes. You
can use one set of certain programs for general use (like office apps) but
I'm not too sure about Windows. Have a look at:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/subscriptions/aa948864.aspx

The other benefit is that you'll get new versions of all applications for
the life of the subscription, so people who bought an MSDN subscription
earlier this year to use VS2005 automatically got VS2008 without any
additional cost.

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

Perhaps its the best way, but not the cheapest, assuming that the final
product will cost about half that (and that I can upgrade so it'll be
cheaper again I hope).

Depends on your requirements, I suppose...

With MSDN do you get operating systems (e.g. Vista) that are not time
limited?

Yes. An MSDN subscription gives you unlimited licences for all of the
software in the level of subscription that you choose so long as it is used
for development, testing and demonstration purposes:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/subscriptions/aa718657.aspx

Also, you are allowed to use one copy of Windows (of your choice) and one
copy of Office to run your business...

 

[Juan T. Llibre]

re:
!> as well as all the other programs that come with the subscription

Remember that there are important limitations on the MSDN licenses.

From the EULA :

---000---
For each license you acquire, the licensed user may also install and use
one copy of the following desktop applications on one device for any purpose.

Office 2007 Ultimate: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, OneNote, InfoPath,
Groove, Visio Professional, Project Standard, SharePoint Portal Designer, and Office Communicator.

This Desktop Applications section of these product use rights applies to the
licensed user’s use of the Desktop Application components of the software.

These rights are in addition to the right to install supplied products for the
purpose of design, development, testing and demonstration of your programs.
---000---





Juan T. Llibre, asp.net MVP
asp.net faq : http://asp.net.do/faq/
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======================================

 

[JJ]

Thanks Mark. That helps.

If it was a case of having to buy vista aswell as msdn then its definately a
no.

However, now I have to balance the cost of:
Vista (ultimate for disk encrypt) + Office 2007 Pro + Visual Studio 2008 Pro
against:
MSDN

Not sure how that will balance out at the moment as I'm still trying to get
all the prices together. This is all used for development so I am not going
against any licensing.

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

Thanks Mark. That helps.

If it was a case of having to buy vista aswell as msdn then its definately
a no.

However, now I have to balance the cost of:
Vista (ultimate for disk encrypt) + Office 2007 Pro + Visual Studio 2008
Pro
against: MSDN

Not sure how that will balance out at the moment as I'm still trying to
get all the prices together. This is all used for development so I am not
going against any licensing.

As I said, it depends what sort of work you do...

E.g. I have one main development machine running 64-bit Vista Business,
Visual Studio.NET Pro, Office 2007 Ultimate, SQL Server 2005 Developer
Edition etc - the cost of just that software alone is greater than the
lowest level MSDN subscription...

However, I also have a whole slew of other virtual machines which I use for
testing. E.g. I have two virtual machines (one running WinXPPro and the
other running Vista Home Premium) just for cross-browser testing - they have
FireFox, Netscape, Opera, Safari etc installed which I would not want on my
my main development machine. I have another virtual machine just for beta
software, currently running the latest CTP of SQL Server 2008, Silverlight
1.1 etc.

If I get a new piece of work which involves e.g. BizTalk, or Exchange, or
whatever, I don't have to worry about whether I can afford the software to
do the work or not...

Until recently, I supported an extremely ancient project running on NT4,
IIS3, MTS2 and SQL 6.5 (yes, really!) Again, that was all running on a
virtual machine.

Similarly, if I get a support call, I can very quickly build a machine with
exactly the same software as the client who is experiencing the problem, and
not have to worry about it...