[oskingen]

Did you know that you can download most Microsoft products for free?

Go to Microsoft Download Center

Many of you ask the question on the forums where to download Microsoft products for testings or others needs...

You can go to the Microsoft Download Center to get the product you want. All of them are feature complete. Here is a list of available products:

Windows Operating Systems

• Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1
• Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day Trial
• Windows HPC Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2008 R2 avec SP1
• Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard
• Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials

Office 2010 and Related Products

• Office Professional Plus 2010
• Project Professional 2010
• Visio Premium 2010

Server Products and Technologies

• Active Directory Federation Services 2.0
• Exchange Server 2010 SP1
• FAST Search Server 2010
• Lync Server 2010
• Project Server 2010
• SharePoint Foundation 2010
• SharePoint Server 2010
• SQL Server 2008 R2
• SQL Server 2012 RC

System Center Products

• System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R3
• System Center Data Protection Manager 2010
• System Center Essentials 2010
• System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 SP1
• System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2
• System Center Service Manager 2010 SP1
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1
• System Center 2012 Pre-Release Products

Cloud Services

• Deploying and Managing Windows Azure Applications
• Office 365
• Windows Intune
• Windows Azure

Forefront Products

• Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010
• Forefront Identity Manager 2010
• Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server
• Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint
• Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010
• Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010 SP1

Go to Microsoft Download Center

This post has been edited by oskingen: 07 January 2012 - 12:14 AM

[5eraph]

I can't help but notice that they're all geared toward business: Server... Professional... Enterprise... Premium... Manager... Gateway.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Please also remember these are TRIALS getting one and bypassing the "trial" by reinstalling every 90days is quite uncool.

This post has been edited by Kelsenellenelvian: 07 January 2012 - 04:35 AM

[mrsk565]

I've heard some people say windows 7 starter is better then 7 original. Has anyone tested this theory yet ? And If so what does that mean for us people running on hardware from 2003. Can we buy and install it or would we be wasting money on something to advanced.

[submix8c]

mrsk565, on 07 January 2012 - 05:26 AM, said:

I've heard some people say windows 7 starter is better then 7 original. Has anyone tested this theory yet ? And If so what does that mean for us people running on hardware from 2003. Can we buy and install it or would we be wasting money on something to advanced.

What is "7 original"?
Try looking here to get an idea of "which features" (starter is real basic). You do know that there's a program that you can download that will tell you whether Win7 will "accept" the hardware you plan to install on? System Requirements

[Tripredacus]

mrsk565, on 07 January 2012 - 05:26 AM, said:

I've heard some people say windows 7 starter is better then 7 original. Has anyone tested this theory yet ? And If so what does that mean for us people running on hardware from 2003. Can we buy and install it or would we be wasting money on something to advanced.

Better than 7PRO, no, capable of things beyond what is possible without modding? Yes.

[MagicAndre1981]

Win7 Starter is the most restricted edition and you can't really work with it. Get the Home Premium and you're fine for home usage.

[CoffeeFiend]

oskingen, on 07 January 2012 - 12:12 AM, said:

Did you know that you can download most Microsoft products for free?

95% of the stuff on your list isn't "free", they're just trial versions. They have lots of free software though: Windows Live suite, Security Essentials, Visual C# Express, VB Express, Visual C++ Express, SQL Server Express (and SQL Server Compact too, and lots of extras), IIS 7.5 Express, Robotics Developer Studio Express, TONS of developer stuff their MVC stack/NuGet/SandCastle/lots of SDKs/all .NET compilers/etc, PowerShell, Hyper-V and Virtual PC, XNA studio, WM and Expression Encoders, XP PowerToys, the SysInternals suite, the Zune player (it's actually not bad), SteadyState, the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool, Virtual Earth, MSRT and Defender, the baseline security analyzer, ActiveSync, Skype, Office viewers, Mathematics, Small Basic (for kids to learn programming), WebMatrix (and the Platform Installer too), Sharepoint Designer, etc.

And we're not talking about things like Media Player and IE version updates, DirectX, .NET frameworks, Service Packs, theme packs (even though it's not software), etc. Including FAR more online content & services than anyone else provides: hotmail, bing, msdn, channel9, skydrive, CodePlex, MSN, technet, etc.But that's all free as well.

mrsk565, on 07 January 2012 - 05:26 AM, said:

windows 7 starter is better then 7 original

Most likely, you mean starter vs home premium. The starter version only has extra limitations and restrictions like not having a x64 version, 2GB of RAM max, no aero glass, no changing wallpaper or themes, etc.

Comparison here.