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Just on a sidenote, ACM and IEEE Computer Society student members get access to a ton of free Microsoft software through MSDNAA, the same program lots of school

Just on a sidenote, ACM and IEEE Computer Society student members get access to a ton of free Microsoft software through MSDNAA, the same program lots of schools participate in for low cost/free MS software, including a lot of what is offered through DreamSpark. Something I've found out most people didn't even know existed, but I think it's a fairly new offering. I didn't even know some of the products available for download through there even existed. Not condoning Microsoft or anything, but perhaps someone needs it. :)

norova 18y ago
>> Not condoning Microsoft or anything, but perhaps someone needs it. :) I really don't get why people are afraid of "condoning" Microsoft. They're one choice in a sea of thousands; to each his own. That mentality really bothers me.
- silencio 18y ago
  Well I saw the sea of dead posts about this topic here before I commented - I wasn't afraid of condoning the use of Microsoft software as much as one of those people would then maybe comment and start off something like that for a small comment I left in hopes that there might be someone else on HN that might find it useful. (And now I notice that more of the comments not-dead on this link are about Microsoft than the DreamSpark program itself...) I personally don't care what I use as long as I can use it for the task at hand, and I also don't care what others choose to use. I think that these tools that are normally fairly expensive now free for academic use to be a nice little touch, but then again I also appreciate that most commercial software is also available at low/no cost to students and educators. What does bother me is kneejerk reactions to being against Microsoft for no good reason. So I use Mac OS X mainly, and *bsd or Linux for servers, and I contribute to an open source project. I still find a use for Server 2008 and Windows Mobile and more..

norova 18y ago

>> Not condoning Microsoft or anything, but perhaps someone needs it. :) I really don't get why people are afraid of "condoning" Microsoft. They're one choice in a sea of thousands; to each his own. That mentality really bothers me.

silencio 18y ago
Well I saw the sea of dead posts about this topic here before I commented - I wasn't afraid of condoning the use of Microsoft software as much as one of those people would then maybe comment and start off something like that for a small comment I left in hopes that there might be someone else on HN that might find it useful. (And now I notice that more of the comments not-dead on this link are about Microsoft than the DreamSpark program itself...) I personally don't care what I use as long as I can use it for the task at hand, and I also don't care what others choose to use. I think that these tools that are normally fairly expensive now free for academic use to be a nice little touch, but then again I also appreciate that most commercial software is also available at low/no cost to students and educators. What does bother me is kneejerk reactions to being against Microsoft for no good reason. So I use Mac OS X mainly, and *bsd or Linux for servers, and I contribute to an open source project. I still find a use for Server 2008 and Windows Mobile and more..