Microsoft seems to be doing things a little differently these days with TechNet Plus. I recently re-upped my subscription, which had lain dormant for awhile, and I went for the full-boat DVD license, thinking that it would be awfully nice not to have to impose a lot of 3GB downloads on the office network that I share with multiple other users.
So the DVD’s arrived the other day, and imagine my chagrin when I discovered that a lot of the eval software wasn’t there – for example, the 64-bit versions of Server 2008 and Vista. I got on the horn to my friendly TechNet representative and said, basically, what’s the deal? In times past, new TechNet Plus subscribers would get a really full set of discs with almost everything you might want on them. Now, my welcome packet of DVD’s is frankly a little thin, and has a lot of gaping holes.
The basic answer was that what you see is what you get, and please visit our website to download what you don’t see (and don’t get). So, if you’re thinking about taking the plunge and forking over a six hundred smackers for TechNet Plus, I’d take a hard look at getting the download-only deal, “TechNet Plus Direct.” You’re probably going to be making a fair number of those multi-gig downloads anyway, so you may as well save yourself (or your company) a couple of C-notes, and spare a couple of plastic trees too.
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