School Access to the MSDN Software Catalogue

Students and staff in the School are now able to download copies of some of Microsoft's software for non-commercial use on their own, home equipment. Already proving very popular with our students, this access to core operating systems, development environments and project management tools to aid private study is provided exclusively by the MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) Academic Alliance. The software includes:

• Windows 7 (x32 and x64 bit versions)
• MS Visio
• MS project
• Visual Studio & the MSDN example libraries & documentation
• SQL server (various versions)
• plus others

The system works by requiring users to be authenticated using their University username and password. It restricts orders to one per product, supplies a single valid licence code per product to activate the software, but also identifies any product sharing which would violate the licence agreement.

The School’s subscription to the MSDN Academic Alliance programme is prooving popular with over 200 downloads winthin the first few days of launch and is another example of the excellent facilities and systems support provided for our students.