For all our criticisms of Microsoft they have been pretty decent with the software they provide for free (Windows Live is a good example).

The Visual Basic Studio Express versions are good solid software packages and can be downloaded from here. These include Visual Basic 2008 Express, Visual C# 2008 Express, Visual C++ 2008 Express, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express and various resources and samples which are really useful. I don’t write C or C++ so for the standout here is the Visual Web Developer which is great.

Even better, if you’re a student, is the Dream Spark giveaway:

You’ll need to be attending a university then you’ll need to enter your student account number and password before being accepted, but most Universities around the world have signed up for this so I think you should be fine.

After being verified you can download all of these if you so desire:

Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
A set of tools for web development (ASP.NET, AJAX), Windows, Office, SQL Server and devices running Windows Mobile.

Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
If you need this, go for it =)

Microsoft Expression Studio
Expression Studio is Microsoft’s answer to Adobe’s products for designers and developers. I’m not sure how popular they are as I haven’t heard much about them. I’m still trying them out for myself.

• Expression Web
• Expression Blend
• Expression Design
• Expression Media

Xna Game Studio 2.0
Build games for Windows and Xbox 360 using .NET and custom managed code libraries. Includes support for Xbox and Window Live support for the creation of multiplayer games.

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The beta version of Mango is open to all users but language courses are only provided to English speaking users. Once signed in users can select from eleven different languages including Japanese, German, Mandarine Chinese , Spanish, French and Russian. All courses are divided into several lessons which are made up of sheets each.

The Japanese language course for instance is made up of 101 lessons, the first lesson of the course has 91 sheets which are called slides here.

Each slide takes up one sheet which means information are separated to concentrate on the important aspects. I was first a little bit worried because the Japanese course began with a conversation that was only displaying Japanese characters which I could not understand.

Luckily those characters were all explained on later slides of that language lesson. I really liked how this was done. The English meaning first, below the Japanese letters and a Japanese speaker who pronounces the words. Everything can be replaced immediately and if you move the mouse over a Japanese word you get an overlay showing how the word is pronounced.

That help does not use the International Phonetic Alphabet but a simply English word of the Japanese characters. Still really helpful to get it right at the beginning.

Several slides contain important information about basic language concepts. Others ask the user a question which he has to answer (for himself) in a time given.

For example. The first sentence that you learn is “Hello ! How are you.” After showing and pronouncing these words in Japanese and giving the user background information the user is asked what Hello and afterwards what How are you means in Japanese. This is shown after a certain time so that the user exactly knows if he was right or wrong.

Speakers seem to be professionals only. I took a look at the German language course as well and it seems that all courses have the same setup. A difference in the German course is that they use colors to show which English word belongs to which German word and explain what it would mean literally.

Mango is in my opinion an excellent online language course which I will be using to learn at least Japanese. Something which I always wanted to do but never had the motivation to do. I hated those book courses with tapes or CDs which were just to uncomfortable to use.

Read More:

Mango

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Their decision to run this promotion was probably made easier by the fact that many students prefer to use Open Office. Students from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy and Spain with a valid email from their educational institutions are able take advantage of this offer.

The price of $59 is for United States students and it can be that it is different for the other countries. The Ultimate edition of Office 2007 contains all the usual Microsoft applications including the following:

Microsoft Office Word 2007
Microsoft Office Excel 2007
Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager
Microsoft Office Access 2007
Microsoft Office Publisher 2007
Office OneNote 2007
Office Groove 2007
Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2007.

The official website displays a countdown currently which is running for about 3 additional hours until the promotion starts. You do not have to hurry though because the offer lasts until April 2008. Enough time to grab Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for this bargain price.

Read More:

The Ultimate Steal
via Cybernetnews

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All the software products are either open source or freeware which have been added with permission of the author of the product. You might know most of the products already but it is still worth checking out for the occasional program that one does not know. Take a look at the list of software that has been included so far. Each contains a link to the developers homepage which is an alternative method to download them.

It is kinda strange that some games have made it into the final distribution, not sure about the motivation to add them to the package. It is nevertheless a great compilation, I found some tools that I have not heard about (yet) and which I will review once I find the time to do so.

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