[trev]

(Original post by Camford)
Some university offer it for free... well, technically, the university isn't offering it. Microsoft is. I can download it for free along with whole load other MS products. Some universities sell them at a price of 20 pounds. I think Warwick sells it for 20 to its students. Universities do this kind of thing. Oxford, Edinburgh and others sell Maple for 10 or 20 pounds.

I'm more of a Borland person than Microsoft. Unfortunately, they don't do free give-aways... CBuilder cost a hell lot more than anything I can think of...

Yeah, I heard uni's offer them for free. Are they the academic version or professional version? I doubt it will be architect version though, as it's usually for programmers in a workplace/job.

How could you download other MS products for free?

How come they sell it cheap?

Is there any difference between Borland and Microsoft. When I see Borland's programming language (i.e. Delphi), it's kind of the same.

(Original post by blunty)
the full edition of visual studio (Enterprise architect edition) will cost around £2,000, but depending on what exactly you want out of it you should probably go for something cheaper. Maybe just C# C++ VB
http://www.dabs.com/uk/Search2/Produ...hphrase=visual

Yeah, that is expensive. I guess the editions below enterprise architect is probably around 1000 quid. Currently, I'm sure the price will be less, as VS.NET 2005 is coming out soon.

I think buying an academic or professional version will be enough for A-level and/or university work though. The other editions are for workplaces usually (i.e. programmers).

(Original post by Camford)
Last time I visited PC world, they are selling these things at 86 pounds (or about) a piece.

Patch: personal edition.

Yup indeed. It's time to sell them cheaper anyway, as they want to get the stock out of the way for VS.NET 2005.

I guess the price per piece of microsoft programming packages is worth it though. However, I would just buy the VS.NET as it's worth it as it contains all the microsoft programming languages.

When VS.NET 2005 comes out, what will be the price of it?

[Camford]

(Original post by trev)
Yeah, I heard uni's offer them for free. Are they the academic version or professional version? I doubt it will be architect version though, as it's usually for programmers in a workplace/job.

How could you download other MS products for free?

How come they sell it cheap?

Is there any difference between Borland and Microsoft. When I see Borland's programming language (i.e. Delphi), it's kind of the same.

Microsoft has something called MSDNAA, which offers univeristy students free download of its product. I think the VS I have access to is professional edition. Yes VS .NET pro 2003. It has whole load of stuff on there... SQL Server Ent, Windows Server 2003 Ent just to name a few. Hopefully, they'll put XP64 on there at some point. (Not that I got a machine that can run it. it's something nice to have ). Got my XP Pro off that place, got have to love it.

Borland stuff are nicer than MS products. That's my opinion anyway. The only exprience I had with VS was VS 6. And it sucked. Delphi/C++Builder are just so much easier to use. Drag and drop the stuff you want on your form and Voila! Write your code. C++Builder got an example which envolves purely drag and drop and change of properties and nothing else . Oh and Borland's products are more expensive .

[trev]

(Original post by Camford)
Microsoft has something called MSDNAA, which offers univeristy students free download of its product. I think the VS I have access to is professional edition. Yes VS .NET pro 2003. It has whole load of stuff on there... SQL Server Ent, Windows Server 2003 Ent just to name a few. Hopefully, they'll put XP64 on there at some point. (Not that I got a machine that can run it. it's something nice to have ). Got my XP Pro off that place, got have to love it.

Borland stuff are nicer than MS products. That's my opinion anyway. The only exprience I had with VS was VS 6. And it sucked. Delphi/C++Builder are just so much easier to use. Drag and drop the stuff you want on your form and Voila! Write your code. C++Builder got an example which envolves purely drag and drop and change of properties and nothing else . Oh and Borland's products are more expensive .

I had a look at the MSDNAA website. It looks impressive. Do all uni's have MSDNAA provided for us? If so, do we need to pay to subscribe for the username and password?

I guess Borland is based on C++ then. It's going to be hard programming in C though. I like the idea of drag and drop, but I thought VS.NET 2003 do that kind of stuff though.

[Camford]

(Original post by trev)
I had a look at the MSDNAA website. It looks impressive. Do all uni's have MSDNAA provided for us? If so, do we need to pay to subscribe for the username and password?

I guess Borland is based on C++ then. It's going to be hard programming in C though. I like the idea of drag and drop, but I thought VS.NET 2003 do that kind of stuff though.

I'm not sure which uni has it and which one doesn't... Even if the uni does, it's only limited to people who do Computer Science.

I haven't got a clue what the most recent VS looks like. Can't be arsed to download 5/6 CDs of stuff when exam is so close .

Borland does 2 major programming languages C/C++ and Java. It has a C#Builder release as well. But I don't know anything about C#, can't really comment. PCPlus gave away a free copy of C#Builder personal earlier this year (or end of last year, can't remember). JBuilder is supposed to be good too. Reverse engineers .class files, supports UML diagrams. Not that I use it. Eclipse all the way . They used to offer Delphi 6 personal for free, not anymore though . And they are selling TurboPascal 7 (a little less than 3mb, release about 20 years ago) for approx 100 pounds .

[Ben]

(Original post by GiBB*89)
why do they charge that much, i read somewere i costs them no more than about £1 per cd to make. so they make £1999 profit.
Can they really expect people to pay that much, it just encourages piracy!

That's assuming it cost them absolutely nothing to make the software. ;/

[Skyrunner]

(Original post by trev)
I had a look at the MSDNAA website. It looks impressive. Do all uni's have MSDNAA provided for us? If so, do we need to pay to subscribe for the username and password?

I guess Borland is based on C++ then. It's going to be hard programming in C though. I like the idea of drag and drop, but I thought VS.NET 2003 do that kind of stuff though.

At Reading we get access to all Microsoft products (including OS's like 2003 Enterprise) including VS.Net 2003, which is sweet, most Uni's have a deal with Microsoft for access to free academic licenses, oddly enough though, first year programming is Delphi, yet they have no deal with Borland! Oh well, at least I should never need to touch Delphi in a serious way again

[trev]

(Original post by Camford)
I'm not sure which uni has it and which one doesn't... Even if the uni does, it's only limited to people who do Computer Science.

I haven't got a clue what the most recent VS looks like. Can't be arsed to download 5/6 CDs of stuff when exam is so close .

Borland does 2 major programming languages C/C++ and Java. It has a C#Builder release as well. But I don't know anything about C#, can't really comment. PCPlus gave away a free copy of C#Builder personal earlier this year (or end of last year, can't remember). JBuilder is supposed to be good too. Reverse engineers .class files, supports UML diagrams. Not that I use it. Eclipse all the way . They used to offer Delphi 6 personal for free, not anymore though . And they are selling TurboPascal 7 (a little less than 3mb, release about 20 years ago) for approx 100 pounds .

I guess not all uni's subsrcibe to the MSDNAA thing then.

Does that mean we can download every single microsoft program that is made until 2005 (e.g. Windows XP, Server 2003, SQL server, Office 2003, etc...), or does it limit what kind of software are there to download?

I'm doing a computing type degree anyway, so I hope my uni that I'm going to have the MSDNAA thing.

Someone could download stuff from MSDNAA, and burn a copy to their friends and distribute it to them.

(Original post by Skyrunner)
At Reading we get access to all Microsoft products (including OS's like 2003 Enterprise) including VS.Net 2003, which is sweet, most Uni's have a deal with Microsoft for access to free academic licenses, oddly enough though, first year programming is Delphi, yet they have no deal with Borland! Oh well, at least I should never need to touch Delphi in a serious way again

Sounds cool. I hope most uni's subscribe to MSDNAA though, as they teach microsoft's programming languages.

I'm sure later on in the future, there would be some kind of academic licenses for Borland.

[greenmuzz]

(Original post by Skyrunner)
At Reading we get access to all Microsoft products (including OS's like 2003 Enterprise) including VS.Net 2003, which is sweet, most Uni's have a deal with Microsoft for access to free academic licenses, oddly enough though, first year programming is Delphi, yet they have no deal with Borland! Oh well, at least I should never need to touch Delphi in a serious way again

Well, first year programming was Delphi. Starting this year it's going to be C. I can't wait to guide the freshers through this... especially seeing as they've decided to go against everyone's advice and use visual studio. Still, more money for me

And Delphi's not so bad. Next time I need to throw a GUI together in a hurry, it'll be my environment of choice - though if I get round to learning enough Python in the near future, that'll change things.

Very much loved the fact I got XP Pro and VS.Net for free off the uni though. Not so important now I use Linux all the time, but it was really useful at the time.

[trev]

(Original post by greenmuzz)
Well, first year programming was Delphi. Starting this year it's going to be C. I can't wait to guide the freshers through this... especially seeing as they've decided to go against everyone's advice and use visual studio. Still, more money for me

I thought not many uni's teach Delphi. I just know that they teach C++, C#, and/or C in visual studio instead of through Delphi.

[Camford]

(Original post by trev)
I guess not all uni's subsrcibe to the MSDNAA thing then.

Does that mean we can download every single microsoft program that is made until 2005 (e.g. Windows XP, Server 2003, SQL server, Office 2003, etc...), or does it limit what kind of software are there to download?

I'm doing a computing type degree anyway, so I hope my uni that I'm going to have the MSDNAA thing.

Someone could download stuff from MSDNAA, and burn a copy to their friends and distribute it to them.

Saidly, the common bulk of Office is not available. OneNote, Visio, Access and InfoPath are available. And No, not everything MSy is available. And No, you can't distribute it to your friends unless you can find a keygen. Everything requires activation and you only have one key for each. And you are only allowed to download one copy of everything that's available. If you want more than one, you'll need to talk "someone".


Greenmuss: Delphi ROCKS!! My uni only has limited "access" to Delphi . I think Kylix support C++, but it's a ted bit expensive. There used to be a free download on Borland for Kylix 3 Personal... Not anymore unfortunately. A friend of mine has it on a disc some where. Might borrow that and play around with it this summer.

[Camford]

(Original post by trev)
I thought not many uni's teach Delphi. I just know that they teach C++, C#, and/or C in visual studio instead of through Delphi.

Delphi supports C/C++?

[greenmuzz]

no. Delphi is built ontop of Borland's own Object Pascal.

Borland do have a C/C++ builder though, but it's not part of Delphi.

[Camford]

(Original post by greenmuzz)
no. Delphi is built ontop of Borland's own Object Pascal.

Borland do have a C/C++ builder though, but it's not part of Delphi.

C++Builder is some expensive gizmo they got... Fairly easy to use, which is a good thing... just too expensive. Too expensive. Having said that Delphi isn't cheap either.

The computer lab has VS and CodeWorrior for C/C++. Looks like they can't afford C++Builder .

[Alaric]

(Original post by Camford)
Saidly, the common bulk of Office is not available. OneNote, Visio, Access and InfoPath are available. And No, not everything MSy is available. And No, you can't distribute it to your friends unless you can find a keygen. Everything requires activation and you only have one key for each. And you are only allowed to download one copy of everything that's available. If you want more than one, you'll need to talk "someone".

The interesting thing about the license is that I can keep MSDNAA stuff after I leave as long as I don't use it commercially. Funnily enough I just went into Windows (for the first time in 45 days ) and downloaded a lot of new software

A.

[Camford]

(Original post by Alaric)
The interesting thing about the license is that I can keep MSDNAA stuff after I leave as long as I don't use it commercially. Funnily enough I just went into Windows (for the first time in 45 days ) and downloaded a lot of new software

A.

You could have just asked me for them. I can even throw in all the enterprise stuff from Borland for free .

[trev]

Camford, can you list the microsoft products that can be downloaded from MSDNAA, besides the ones you just mentioned in this thread. I bet it's a long list.

Since we can still keep the username and password forever for MSDNAA, people can give the username and password to other people, and they can download them a free copy and so on.

[Skyrunner]

(Original post by greenmuzz)
Well, first year programming was Delphi. Starting this year it's going to be C. I can't wait to guide the freshers through this... especially seeing as they've decided to go against everyone's advice and use visual studio. Still, more money for me

And Delphi's not so bad. Next time I need to throw a GUI together in a hurry, it'll be my environment of choice - though if I get round to learning enough Python in the near future, that'll change things.

Very much loved the fact I got XP Pro and VS.Net for free off the uni though. Not so important now I use Linux all the time, but it was really useful at the time.

I know, and it's made me rather pissed off that we were the last year to suffer it, and it ain't THAT bad, but still, it's Pascal lol, bah, I should stop moaning, and be happy that I am unlikely to have to any serious Delphi again Thank God it's not C# LOL

[Camford]

(Original post by trev)
Camford, can you list the microsoft products that can be downloaded from MSDNAA, besides the ones you just mentioned in this thread. I bet it's a long list.

It's not actually that long. Just think of the obvious. VS, parts of the office... and a few operating systems, SQL Server. I think that's about it really. Oh, MSDN Library or something.

[trev]

(Original post by Camford)
It's not actually that long. Just think of the obvious. VS, parts of the office... and a few operating systems, SQL Server. I think that's about it really. Oh, MSDN Library or something.

Sounds good to me. I think those are the main software students need anyway though. I would want Visio especially if I have the MSDNAA membership, as that software is good for drawing. It's good that the MSDNAA membership is for life though.

[Camford]

It's good. I might get VS at some point next year. I have Visio downloaded when I was doing my physics practical write up. Can't say it's much of a use to me at the moment. It's a nice thing to use when you need to draw DFDs or UML diagrams.