Free tools bonanza for students from Microsoft

First thing first i would like to apologize for been away from posting any new blogs. Its been hectic for me as i have been trying to squeeze in 25 hours out of 24 hours . I have started my doctoral research studies as i cleared my qualifying exams in late Jan. 2008.

I would like to say a big "Thank You" to Microsoft for providing, students with FREE copies of Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server and Windows Server 2003 thorough Microsoft DreamSpark . If you want to learn the new cutting age technology introduced by Microsoft, i will encourage you to register, roll up the sleeves and start using it. If your school is not listed in the listbox, not to worry they have provided a link to JourneyEd. This company will do the student verification and once your verified you will receive an email within 24 hours with downloading instructions. I got my downloading instruction email in 15 minutes. Its almost 3.3GB to download the VS 2008, so you better leave the downloading for overnite. I have been using VS 2008 Express Edition for almost 2 months now and i liked the LINQ classes, AJAX controls that are provided along with the ease of coding(reducing the loc and errors that might go with it). I'm hoping to see the ASP.NET, VS 2008 and Silverlight to enable the user to develop RIA (Rich Internet Application) with a shorter turn around time.
Microsoft will launch VS 2008 in Baltimore on May 23rd, 2008 and the registration is still open. So if you guys wanna be there, please register soon.