We help you get
closer to your customers.

Free is free

Microsoft has recently announced that it will give away, for FREE, many of its software development programs . The catch? The offer is only for students. This new proposal (named DreamSpark) will include Visual Studio Professional Edition, SQL Server 2005, Windows Server Standard Edtion, and a number of frameworks that can be used for anything from game programming to interactive web development.

In the article, Bill Gates says that DreamSpark will be good for Microsoft’s business. By giving away these software development tools to a core target audience (like students), the chance that the next big web application will be Microsoft based will increase dramatically. I have to say that I agree with this assessment. My college programming curriculum did not have any interaction with Microsoft products. As a result, I had a big learning curve at my first job trying to acquaint myself with the Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE). By giving such things away to students, Microsoft provides them with an opportunity to gain this experience before they join the workforce. These new workers will have more confidence in their abilities with Microsoft products and will be more comfortable using them in future projects.