Microsoft Action Pack - a deal!

What a deal this is! If any of you are developers and are not familiar with the Action Pack you really should look into it. Sometime last year I was considering an MSDN subscription. But at a going price of $2200 or so, it's a little much (although you do get ALL the software MS produces - except for games). The major difference between MSDN and MAPS is that MSDN includes Visual Studio. See official details here.

Two things you should know before purchasing:

• You will not receive a full version of Vista - only an upgrade from XP Pro.
  
  I can understand the intent behind this, but I don't really agree with the approach. Here is blog with more details. This was a rule that was put into place in summer of 2006 in attempt to prevent piracy. It seems that many businesses were using the licenses to distribute with new PCs, which of course if a violation of the agreement. So instead of focusing on the root problem of piracy by validating buyers as valid Partners, Microsoft has decided to treat the symptom. So we, the paying customers, are the ones who really suffer.
  
  
  
• No downgrade rights.
  


This one I do not understand. I, like many others, are in the situation of needing to have both operating systems available. I have some clients still on the 1.1 framework, and I'm not sure how well Vista supports this. Fortunately for my situation this isn't a big deal since I am a first time MAPS subscriber. I already have a licensed copy of XP Pro so I will just run a dual boot, or maybe a virtual machine (not sure yet) to have access to XP. My computer is also "Vista Ready" so I am not in need of hardware upgrades. For others who might have older hardware that Vista may not support are forced to upgrade their hardware as well, and the cost can increase significantly if multiple machines are being used.

Even with these two drawbacks this is still a deal. You get access to most of Microsoft's software with multiple licenses for one year, all for $299. As time and money allow I can't wait to setup an Exchange server, Sharepoint server, SQL Server, etc., not for production of course, but just to quench my personal thirst for technology.