Microsoft To Shut Down TechNet Subscription Service

otaku244 writes "Since 1998, Microsoft TechNet has been a mainstay for all system developers attached to the Microsoft platform, given the ease of access to almost every product the company has produced. Unfortunately, the days of a cheap, unlimited Microsoft development stack are coming to an end."

Comments

This is mostly outdated service

[JustANormalGuy]

Visual Studio and other products have free versions now, so TechNet subscription is mostly outdated service. Visual Studio Express is the same great product that the full version of Visual Studio is, but is great for beginners. Visual Studio as a whole is a great product too. And, MSDN subscription is there too.

Combine that with subscription based Office and you have little reason to get TechNet.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not convinced. The only bits we got on our volume license were most versions of windows. No Lync, sharepoint, forefront, CRM, yaddy yaddy ya

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Major Blud]

Some of us like to create test labs that will outlast the 30-180 day expiration date associated with MS evaluation periods (such as with SQL Server or BizTalk). An MSDN susbscription is more expensive than TechNet by the order of several magnitude.

I'm not sure what's going on with MS these days. They release a monstrosity of a desktop OS (Win8), a sub-par hermaphrodite laptop/tablet to go with it (Surface), and they are now giving their loyal developers the finger.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you work for MS?

There is a difference between Visual Studio Express and Visual Studio TF. There is a difference between MS Office and Office 365. Please explain why Technet is obsolete because of those products.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

by the order of several magnitude

I don't think that expression means what you think it means.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

MSDN subscriptions are at least 3x the cost of a TechNet subscription. The point of the TechNet was that you were not a developer, you were an integration tester.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Morpeth]

It's patently obvious you have NEVER had a TechNet subscription -- especially if you think all there is to it is Office and a light version of VS.

This is a serious drag, especially for contractors/consultants, small shops, and MS developers of all kinds

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Lunix Nutcase]

So an MSDN subscription is either 19900 or 29900 dollars? Since when?

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[JDG1980]

I'm not sure what's going on with MS these days. They release a monstrosity of a desktop OS (Win8), a sub-par hermaphrodite laptop/tablet to go with it (Surface), and they are now giving their loyal developers the finger.

The cynic in me thinks that Microsoft knows its desktop monopoly is becoming steadily less lucrative, so they want to squeeze out every last penny while they can. We all know that for years, many users got Technet subscriptions and ignored the "for testing only" proviso, instead using them as cheap installs for self, friends, and family. When Microsoft cared about desktop market share, this didn't bother them much, since they'd rather people use their software (even at low cost) instead of going to a competitor. Now, however, they have delusions of being a "device and service company" and want to cut the desktop loose. It's absurd, of course (the desktop is the only area that MS has any kind of real advantage over its competitors) but it is what Steve Ballmer thinks.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[jones_supa]

Visual Studio and other products have free versions now, so TechNet subscription is mostly outdated service. Visual Studio Express is the same great product that the full version of Visual Studio is, but is great for beginners. Visual Studio as a whole is a great product too. And, MSDN subscription is there too.

Visual Studio 2013 Preview just came out of the oven, too.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

TechNet was never for developers. It was for sys admins/IT professionals.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Nadaka]

There are a crap ton of features missing from the free version of vs.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Virtucon]

You didn't pay enough.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[MadAndy]

... for as long as I can remember!

Here in New Zealand, MSDN Ultimate is $26,369.00.

Better to fly first-class to the U.S. and pick one up for half the price. Understandably we're a little sour about it!

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Wookact]

Thanks! We can always count on JustANormalShill !

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[hairyfeet]

Technet was great for testing OSes though, you could try just about any MSFT OS, desktop or server, and you'd have enough time to really put it through its paces. Also having it all at a single place makes it easier, losing Technet is frankly gonna suck.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[mlawrence]

Actually *several* orders of magnitude would make it at least $199,000 or $299,000.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[EvilSS]

Visual Studio Express is the same great product that the full version of Visual Studio is, but is great for beginners.

This sounds great until you read the license agreement where it says that it is illegal to use Visual Studio Express for commercial purposes..

This is not true. There is no restriction for using VS Express editions for commercial development.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio Express editions are not a substitute for the real, combined Visual Studio You-Paid-How-Much? Edition(no "s").

If you have a solution that contains a database project, a C# WCF service, and a web application using Razor, you can't use the Express editions to manage that in any useful or meaningful way. VS Express is either a demo or is for "developers" that don't care about sane architecture and aren't doing this for money. It is most certainly not "the same great product that the full version of Visual Studio is".

And a subscription to Office (only!) costs about what TechNet did, so that's in the less-value-for-more-money category, too.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Lunix Nutcase]

Yes, my bad. I left out a zero.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[jones_supa]

The full versions is also available for testing.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

And over here in Debian land we just type apt-get install build-essential.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[FatdogHaiku]

...a sub-par hermaphrodite laptop/tablet to go with it (Surface)...

They knew people were going to say it could go fuck itself... so this is really a time saving feature...

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[hairyfeet]

Its the same thing that fucked the game companies...greed. They also tightened the rules on MSDN to "fight piracy" while ignoring the simple fact that PIRATES DON'T BUY SUBSCRIPTIONS!!!!

Its the same stupid shit as EA, they just fuck the paying customers while the pirates just bypass the bullshit. Pirates can get ANY version hassle free without giving them a cent, so WTF MSFT?

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Sir_Sri]

This.

From TFA it sounds like they're moving more to a 'you only need it for X number of days to do that sort of integration testing, or you can buy one license if you need more time'. If you need a lot of time and a lot of licenses to build an application that's what MSDN is for.

Ultimately it's just a way to raise the price. Fair enough, if you think the price is too low on your product you're free to raise it and see if the market adjusts. I can see the problem they were getting into as more and more people were probably buying a technet license for their home family offices and parents and that sort of thing, which was costing MS money. I think they probably realized that when they dropped the price of Office Home and student people were.. well, willing to actually buy it. Rather than all these stupid deals where you got it through an employer or through school or the like (or you just pirated it). This way, you go into a store, you pay your money and you go home with it. No special program arrangements on MS end etc. Technet is/was a tremendously good deal, it was quasi legit enough that they couldn't justify trying to enforce the license, and that's the problem. Most of those people will continue to pay, so MS will try and charge them more money for it.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[TheRealMindChild]

Resource View isn't even available in Express editions, so you can't even edit a dialog.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Starteck81]

Visual Studio and other products have free versions now, so TechNet subscription is mostly outdated service. Visual Studio Express is the same great product that the full version of Visual Studio is, but is great for beginners. Visual Studio as a whole is a great product too. And, MSDN subscription is there too. Combine that with subscription based Office and you have little reason to get TechNet.

You mean other than the fact that it costs considerably more for the MSDN subscription to get the same level of service. I went and looked at their free technet downloads and found the selection lacking, considerably. They only put in the main products so if I want to practice with MDT, MDOP, or any number of other smaller expansion packs I have to go with a much more expensive MSDN subscription. That complaint is secondary only to the fact that I can't do anything complicated with what is available because the trial times are all different for each product they have posted up. So I get my VM environment set up with a domain cluster and then want to try standing up SCCM, WDS, MDT and PKI to learn how to manage that kind of a setup I can't do it anymore. The system expires before I ever get close to setting up any kind a robust lab. If you're just doing a few one off labs like the ones you find in the exam prep books then this strategy might be fine for you. However, for those of us that use it to really get familiar with the products, this is hugely limiting. We either have to spend thousands more a year or we just have to rebuild our labs every time the trial expires, which will be a huge headache.

I hope a good tech witch comes and puts a spell on Ballmer that makes him shit Windows 8 brick phones until he learns to listen to customers.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

They also tightened the rules on MSDN [zdnet.com] to "fight piracy" while ignoring the simple fact that PIRATES DON'T BUY SUBSCRIPTIONS!!!!

And Slashdot posters DON'T READ THE ARTICLES.

To make matters worse, that smoking deal was also a boon for software pirates, who figured out long ago that they could subscribe to TechNet and sell the keys (sometimes along with counterfeit media) via the web, at prices that were too good to be true.

Notice, that's the traditional for-profit type of pirate, not your average P2Per.

Re: This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people I know wouldn't bother with the effort if I couldn't get them a free technet copy

Next time ill just tell them to buy a Mac or get a free version of office

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

counterfeiting != piracy

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Common Joe]

The change in Technet doesn't affect me personally (as I'm a developer), but I'm at a life change right now and I need to change and update my programming skills. The question is, what should I be looking to do with my life?

When Microsoft pulls stunts like this, I take notice and I know I'm not the only one. Why would I want to invest my time and money into a sinking ship? I have 20 to 25 more years of development before I retire and right now I'm a .NET developer. C# is a pretty good language, but Microsoft is screwing up so much else, I don't really see how businesses are going to continue to support Microsoft. When those businesses drop Microsoft, it's going to go fast and my ability to get and keep a good paying job will go with it.

Microsoft, are you listening? Technet doesn't affect me directly, but I see this. You know that whole thing with Windows 8.0 and 8.1 and the no-start menu? That affected me and I started changing he advice I gave to people. Then there are the things that do affect me greatly. I called you a few months ago when I was investigating possibilities for my future and you gave me shitty advice because your own people couldn't figure out your own licensing. A word of warning: You have really big problems. You think you hide your issues from us? Tell us things are ok? Lie to us? Tell us that "Metro" which can only hog the whole screen is really a good thing? Think again. We can see your failures and piece together what is really going on behind your closed doors. We can smell how sick your company is and its really repugnant. People like me determine in the workforce which languages and operating systems to use. We play around with this stuff at work and at home. You really think you're going to squeeze us with UEFI and Technet? Your company is dying and we the tech people know it and we're going to start whispering that to our bosses and quietly switching away from you. You are not safe. The momentum is shifting and when it really gets going in the other direction you won't be able to stop it. You still have time to fix this, but you're being brain-dead stupid. Start listening to us because we sure as hell are listening and watching you.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[MickyTheIdiot]

Do you know what the biggest indicator will be that they are not going to rely on the Desktop OS to be the cash cow?

If they release Office for Android.

If they do that then they will be admiting that Office is where they're going to make money and the OS will just be a secondary operation. The reason they are scared as crap to release Office on multiple platforms isn't because they can't do it, it's because they are scared of migration when Corporate Robots learn they aren't stuck with Windows to use their precious Excel documents.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[skegg]

Ouch !!!

Though we also get screwed here in Australia.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually *several* orders of magnitude would make it at least $199,000 or $299,000.

Not in binary.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Actually *several* orders of magnitude would make it at least $199,000 or $299,000.

This is slashdot, we use base 2, not base 10.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[zzottt]

Mod this up!

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[aztracker1]

You may want to take a little time to look into some non-sql databases (Redis, RethinkDB, MongoDB, Couch etc...) as well as another server-side platform (NodeJS, Python) ...

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? Now we know how willingly Microsoft has cooperated with the NSA.

Windows has gone straight from being buggy to being bugged.

Just. Don't. Do. It.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. Technet was the only place to legally get older software from MS for migration and other testing. Exchange 2003, SQL 2000, Office 2000, etc, all the way back to DOS and Windows 3.11. The new model they are suggesting only allows you to download time-limited test versions of what has been recently released. So now, if you have a test lab setup and tweaked the way you wanted, it would likely expire before you complete testing or move on to other projects.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Full MSDN costs 13,000 for the first year, and a 4,000 per year subscription.

So at least the first year is 2 orders of magnitude greater.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/buy.aspx

Re: This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's more likely that MS just don't want to share Office revenues with their arch rivals Google and Apple.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

and then patiently wait for the Year of the Linux Desktop.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Gadget_Guy]

counterfeiting != piracy

The unauthorised copying and distribution of copyright works is exactly what the term means, and has done so since at least the 17th century. I am sure you old-timers who predate this usage probably still complain about this. Frankly, you would serve the planet better if, instead of your pendantry over this one use of this word, that you shared the secret of your longevity.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is as (non) functional as the iOS version, I think most people will pass on using it.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple, Android and Linux aren't bugged?

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

My small company pays $400/year/person for MSDN. If you play the list price, you're doing it wrong, along with almost all other Microsoft products.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is.

Android and Linux aren't.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[mysidia]

They release a monstrosity of a desktop OS (Win8), a sub-par hermaphrodite laptop/tablet to go with it (Surface), and they are now giving their loyal developers the finger.

Technet subscriptions are not allowed to be used for software development and testing purposes per the EULA.

Technet subscriptions are for IT administrators, training, evaluation, and proof of concept.

MSDN subscriptions are for development, testing, and demonstration, per the EULA, and not allowed to be used for training/evaluation.

I wonder if they are just going to combine the two?

Re: This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't all these sql databases? Not MSSQL doesn't mean not SQL.

Re: This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

There are literally NSA-provided patches in Linux and therefore Android. Want to bet?

And before you point to many eyes, let me remind you of the underhanded C competition. Are you absolutely sure?

Re: This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

The NSA-provided SELinux patches are optional, were added in version 2.6 of the kernel and yes, they have been thoroughly vetted by a number of different organisations.

There's no such thing as zero possibility, so no, not absolutely sure. But it's close.

On the other hand, it's proven that Microsoft is a collaborator. My choice is clear.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[pla]

Visual Studio and other products have free versions now, so TechNet subscription is mostly outdated service.

Translation: "I have no clue what Technet does".

Visual studio? Try virtually every Microsoft product ever created, available for download and legal for running without further licensing so long as you use them for intentionally-vague "development" purposes.


Bad move all around, Microsoft. On the one hand, I don't really care, because I have the last 15 or so years worth of physically mailed MSDN discs, and if you cared about selling from your back-catalog, you'd still offer XP for retail. On the other hand - You want me giving the latest and greatest version of your toys a spin, because what amuses me to write my next internal app for today, my company will pick up a few hundred thousand in licenses to legally deploy it next year.

But hey, just keep pushing Win8 and the cloud, and pulling stunts like this, and then wonder why no one seems to write apps for your platforms anymore.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Grygus]

We are! The key is to use words in a certain way. You just won't listen, and that is why you keep dying. It is heartbreaking, really.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[avgjoe62]

This is a serious drag, especially for contractors/consultants, small shops, and MS developers of all kinds

This. I set up an entire lab where I used to work using TechNet, mirroring the production environment so we could test MS Updates and other software updates before we let them loose on the corporate desktops. We even used it to test the changes the developers would port from their dev systems before we put them on the production systems.

When I left that company, I used my own TechNet subscription to test deployments before I would go to a client site. I kept up on my skills and learned new ones using the subscription, even doing an entire MS Dynamics deployment on my network at home before installing it for a client. My TecnNet subscription added value to my work. I will be looking for some sort of replacement, because I know I the value it gave me. I just think Microsoft doesn't realize the value of letting a consultant learn their products in depth at their own pace.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[mlts]

I think MS is shooting themselves in their own foot by canning Technet.

Instead, for the same stuff, MS demands I pay $6119.00 with a $2569.00 renewal each year? That pretty much cuts out anyone but businesses.

Microsoft needs developers and people versed in their offerings. Even though VS is not involved, cutting them off like this is not going to help with the paucity of apps for their device platforms. Instead of killing Technet, MS needs to actually expand it, so they can expand the Windows Phone ecosystem. Even though technically, Technet isn't for development, people still use it for testing, and without this, it may be a tipping point, since OSX development/testing tools are licensed at no charge with the OS.

My main use for Technet is to keep atop of the latest and greatest enterprise stuff. For example, self-server password resetting on domains, Windows InTune for edge boxes, Windows Server 2012 and the added features (deduplication, Storage Spaces, etc.) Even though I might be lucky enough to see about stuff through my job, I'd rather have something to keep my personal stuff separate.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[SerpentMage]

Did you read the article? Here is what was said:

"Unfortunately, the days of a cheap, unlimited Microsoft development stack are coming to an end."

First, Visual Studio Express is not a development environment. It is a toy environment to attempt to learn how to program. Yes yes I can write some "sophisticated" code. However, let's compare this to other IDE's like Eclipse, NetBeans or Idea Community edition. I am not trying to start an IDE war. I am pointing out regardless of the mentioned IDE's their base functionality is pretty darn impressive.

Visual Studio is a great product? Sure it is, but heck so is a Ferrari, but I am not going to drive that car near my house as it would fall off the cliff due to the rough roads. I need tools that are affordable, and Visual Studio ain't that anymore.

MSDN subscription, heck let's go for broke shall we? This is an expensive development environment. Even the base edition on a per yearly basis is pretty darn expensive.

The article poster is right, "cheap umlimited" Microsoft development has come to an end.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[SerpentMage]

I would like to call BS... For here is my question, what else are you buying from Microsoft? Can we get a list of that, and how much you are paying? My point is that Microsoft gets you one way or the other. They don't give you MSDN for 400/year/developer without you giving a good blood letting somewhere else.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[KingMotley]

Here you go, a free copy of Visual Studio 2012 Express: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-2012-express that includes all the MSDN information.

SQL Server, why not develop on either SQL Express or SQL Compact, both are free as well.

Making websites, no new signups, but you could have gotten Windows 7, SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio 2012 Premium, and MSDN for free here for two years: http://www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark/webpro/

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[SerpentMage]

Been there, done that, and got the new IDE...

Since you are a Microsoft developer you are probably earning money right now. (Don't diss me as saying that with other stuff you can't earn money.) This means you want to get into something that probably has an established marketplace and established income.

1) Java, or anything related to Java. This is the little engine that could. Whether you are doing Scala, Java, Groovy, or Spring, etc. This little environment just keeps on going. I program these days for the most part in Groovy and Java and can't complain.

2) Javascript. I am not just talking about HTML, but things like nodejs. Javascript is pretty cool and there is a market for developers.

3) PHP: People write quite a bit of code in this.

The rest are niche. I am not saying that they are not profitable. But they are niche and hence you need to find what you want to do. Many of these niche programming languages are rather enjoyable to write code in. Java VM stuff is very much production coding and at times can be very boring. Whereas things like Ruby, Python, etc, etc have very interesting frameworks and are not as tedious at times.

In all of these yes, look at the no-sql databases.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[pla]

I am sure you old-timers who predate this usage probably still complain about this. Frankly, you would serve the planet better if, instead of your pendantry over this one use of this word

No doubt you will have great success in explaining to that group of nice young Somalian men who just boarded your cruise ship that you have no issue with their unauthorized copying and distribution of your ship's manifest. They will certainly recognize your wisdom and give you a free pair of knock-off Nikes as compensation for your wit.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[KingMotley]

Real developers know that technet was bascially the exact same information available on their website, on a DVD. It also didn't include any developer tools at all (No OS's, No SDKs, No Visual Studio, No Sharepoint, etc.) The fact that most people just look it up online rather than putting in a disk today (and have for years) is why Technet is dead.

Also real developers know that UEFI is a good thing and has nothing to do with any kind of lock in. You may not like secure boot, which is tin foil hattery of a completely different subject. Are you sure you work in the tech field at all?

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[zlives]

i guess MS no longer needs sys admins and IT professionals to support their products.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[xSauronx]

im a uni student and get msdn-like access to microsoft software, and have even had access to vmware software (mainly workstation, but that was pretty handy)

i like to run servers in a whitebox vmware esxi server for testing things, sometimes just to learn, sometimes because the IT consulting company i work for doesnt have anything i can test in before i do things at a client, and there are times where i am looking to make a chance that might cause a lot of problems if i cant do some quick testing first. without that vmware/ms software i wouldnt have had the skills to get this job at home.

so my plan was to get technet after i graduated and keep it, id pay happily to keep getting server and desktop OSs that i can test with. meh. thanks, microsoft.

ill just have to hope the IT firm im at doesnt ever change their msdn login, as i dont want to be with them much longer....but i would like the software to play with :)

Re: This is mostly outdated service

[masdog]

Microsoft wouldn't have to share any revenue with Google if they released an Android version. They would write their own marketplace and just require users to check the "Allow installs from other sources" (or whatever it is called) option.

Re: This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

No, these are not SQL oriented at all. They are document based databases often formatted as JSON. You don't use Structured Query Language (SQL..) to query, instead you use other forms of queries. There are typically no joins, some are not ACID, others are...

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't a fucking developer subscription. It was meant for system builders and integrators to test applications and build test networks, etc.

Real developers would know that and would have, instead, looked at MSDN.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

There's this thing called 'Google', it's a search engine. It pulls together a wealth of knowledge and allows you to 'search' through it, often in the time it takes you to type a reply to a comment in Slashdot.
Here's an example URL showing MSDN prices that I found from 'Google':
http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/buy.aspx
If you visit that 'link' and change the country code to 'New Zealand' it will bring up prices.
Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN is $26,369.00
United states price is $13,299.00, which is around $17,000 New Zealand Dollars. That's a NZD$9k+ difference, for NOTHING extra, costing Microsoft NOTHING more to provide.
Summery: You get fucked in the ass by Microsoft outside the US of A

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry.. Small Enterprise. I guess I associate the word "company" with a corp, so 1,000 employees with about 50 SQL DB servers and a few hundred IIS web servers. Not a "small business".. End of day, nothing thinking well over here.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit! You always do that. You always mess up some mundane detail.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[hairyfeet]

Yeah and my dick is 14 foot long and named Leeroy, just because you scream "Its teh PIRATZES" don't make it so. I can walk down to the shop and show you what the pirates use as I had one hand me a copy to play with, its a bootloader hacked Windows 7 and 8 that doesn't need ANY damned keys and somehow they have even managed to get it to autohide any Windows updates that have anything to do with WGA, damned if i know how but they did it.

so quit buying the bullshit, its the same bullshit EA and ubisoft pulled with their "Its teh PIRATEZ" garbage and the pirates laughed their fucking ass of because they DON'T BUY RETAIL and they sure as fuck aren't buying Technet either. The ONLY ones i have ever met buying Technet were the ones that needed to pre-test the new stuff before doing SMB rollouts, the kind of places where its too small for MSDN but too large to just go COTS and all this dumbshit move will do is give 'em one more reason to talk to google. wow MSFT, you just keep raising the bar when it comes to being dumbasses!

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

It's patently obvious you have NEVER had a TechNet subscription -- especially if you think all there is to it is Office and a light version of VS.

This is a serious drag, especially for contractors/consultants, small shops, and MS developers of all kinds

about time you stopped using outrageously overpriced proprietary software and use open source. Guess how much it costs?

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[asmkm22]

I've had a Technet subscription for for years now, and honestly have only used it for cheap access to Office and Win X licenses. Yeah, once in a while I'll need to do an install of something like Exchange for testing before deployment, but that's not why I kept renewing.

The fact is, MS products are really expensive. I used to pirate them because the costs were so high. When I started a business, and found out about Technet, I jumped on the chance to "go legit" without going broke (morally, more than technically). The question is, will I go back to pirating their software or will I fully migrate to open-source solutions? Either way, MS stops getting 200 a year from me.

I'm sad to see Technet go, because I felt it was a good value for me. I didn't hand out keys, and have legitimately used the service to stay on top of new programs, like running through various installs for server releases and such, so that I can recommend the products with confidence to my clients. What's really funny is that all of this push to the cloud has made migrating away from Office products much easier than it would have been 5 or 10 years ago. I can do 90% of my business-related work with Google Docs, now that I'm used to it. I use Debian for work, despite being a "Microsoft Shop." It's only going to get worse for them, while it gets better for the industry.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[mysidia]

i guess MS no longer needs sys admins and IT professionals to support their products.

They want Enterprises to move to Azure and the Microsoft cloud.

On-Premise deployments of software are in the process of being phased out.

Microsoft has planned obsolescence for Windows IT professionals

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[mysidia]

Visual studio? Try virtually every Microsoft product ever created, available for download and legal for running without further licensing so long as you use them for intentionally-vague "development" purposes.

I believe the product you are thinking of is called MSDN Ultimate. Technet doesn't even include Visual studio, because Technet is not for use in an application development environment!

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[squiggleslash]

Well, the problem with that is that's actually the direction they're going - not "Office for Android" specifically, but for platform independence. We already have Office 365, which works fine under Firefox for Ubuntu. At a guess I'd say that, actually Office for Android will probably become available soon after a proper Office RT comes out (that is, a platform--formerly-known-as-Metro version, not the current "We just recompiled the desktop version for ARM" thing.) - the hard bit is creating a touch version.

And whether it'll be "Office for Android" or simply "Office 365 version 17 now using jQuery Mobile" is open to question. But I think it'll happen.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio Express is the same great product that the full version of Visual Studio

No it isn't. Substantial and important features are missing.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

by the order of several magnitude

I don't think that expression means what you think it means.

Sorry. Is "it costs a fuckload more" layman enough for you, or do we really need to discuss VAR discounts or other bullshit hacks to get the price down to a mere shitload...

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Not with Azure!

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[masdog]

Do they really expect that to happen? Cloud is great, but there are a lot of legal, financial, and regulatory reasons for on-premise deployments. Does Microsoft really think that companies will just move into the cloud (especially one run by Microsoft)?

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[smash]

You're assuming your device firmware is safe? Cute.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[monzie]

I wish I had mod points, Dear AC sir. I consider myself a pragmatic developer and I'm not interested in starting an MS vs Linux vs .... war. I am also a full time freelancer and I currently work on Ruby on Rails. When my client suggested that we 'port' our app to .Net ( whatever that means ) - I was appalled at the investment I need to put in to get my dev environment going.

I am happy developing my webapps on Rails and Django and I see it remaining so for the foreseeable future. ( I am also keeping an eye out for Google Go ). But I am *not* going to use a programming framework tied so closely to an IDE.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[swalve]

Which you can still do, apparently. Just download the trial version and use it for the 3-6 months allowed. If you can't figure out whether the software works for you in that amount of time, reinstall a new one or turn back the clock.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[swalve]

My guess is that they want them to go to training and get certified. Fucking around in an evaluation copy does some good, but actually learning in a structured, tested way is how professionals learn things.

Re: This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Base 2, Base 10....color me geek, but i still can't see the difference.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, their goal is 'you make good stuff that makes other people use us and we bill them!'

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Drakonblayde]

It's not necessarily about what he would prefer to use, but what his clients want to use. If the client wants Microsoft solutions, you can try and educate them about open source, but if they decide they still want Microsoft, are you going to tell them to find someone else because it conflicts with your personal preferences? Unless you're already financially independent, then no, you're going to give the client what they ask for (and figure you can make some 'i told you so' cash when they get what they asked for, but not what they wanted).

In order to do that, you need to be able to actually deploy Microsoft solutions. TechNet is a huge help to the independent contractor or freelance consultant when it comes to keeping your skills sharp.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[hairyfeet]

Great, while you guys quibble with semantics you are all ignoring the simple fact that PIRATES DON'T BUY LICENSES, hence why they are called fricking PIRATES!

God that kind of shit drives me up a damned wall, its like those "Oh to stop criminals we'll pass more gun laws" they DON'T FOLLOW THE STUPID LAWS YOU HAVE NOW which is why they. are.criminals. so passing more laws? fucking STUPID.

I bet my last dollar if you looked at ALL of windows piracy? you MAY have .7%, and that's not a typo, less than 1%, are using any MSDNs or technet crap because why should they pay MSFT a damned dime when they can get a bootloader hacked copy of TPB for exactly NOTHING. I swear i'd love to just bitchslap the moron that thought it was about piracy with a print out of how every. damned.version. of Windows that has EVER been made, even the offbeat shit like Embedded and WinFLP is ALREADY ON TPB so why would you buy a fricking technet?

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[readingaccount]

Now, however, they have delusions of being a "device and service company" and want to cut the desktop loose. It's absurd, of course (the desktop is the only area that MS has any kind of real advantage over its competitors) but it is what Steve Ballmer thinks.

Oh come on. Do you really expect any company that sees the writing on the wall in terms of their traditional market drying up to just stand there and go "oh well, we were dominant before, but we're weak in the new market - let's just not bother trying"?

Microsoft are changing direction because they have to. If they don't try and address the mobile sector, they'll be relegated to IBM status - a company that services their niche reasonably well but are no longer in the public view or mindshare. Microsoft cannot stand not being on top (they've been on top for so long, it's not a surprise), and hence will try whatever they can to compete in new markets even if it's not their strength.

The desktop paradigm is probably about as mature and refined as it's going to get. It's not absurd at all for Microsoft to want to avoid becoming stagnant. Whether they do a good job of it or now though is a matter for the public.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Luckyo]

Android has plenty of google's code, and is extremely likely bugged. I'd say that considering recent relevations, folks at NSA have been doing a stellar job of bugging everything and everyone. And I'd struggle to find any reason why one of their "model citizens", google wouldn't bug their OS for them.

Linux in general is a big question mark. On one hand, you can audit code. On the other hand, there's so much of it, and folks working at NSA are best in their field, so injection of specific bugs and backdoors in linux is extremely likely.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[poetmatt]

this is hilarious.

why do they even have to bother with google or MS if they already have taps at the source?

Re: This is mostly outdated service

[chromeronin799]

Unless you have to support or learn how to use any ms software. It is still the main way that I know of to install Dev software in our labs that don't have Internet access.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

... for as long as I can remember!

Here in New Zealand, MSDN Ultimate is $26,369.00.

Better to fly first-class to the U.S. and pick one up for half the price. Understandably we're a little sour about it!

How do you get such cheap flights! Last time I tried to get a business class flight from NZ to USA it was more than 27k return!

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Guppy]

This is slashdot, we use base 2, not base 10.

What is this mysterious "2" you speak of? ;)

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

"I will be looking for some sort of replacement"
The replacement is Linux.

Re: This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't it 10BASE-T? Shit just lost it here...

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[KinkyClown]

Not just Microsoft. Adobe does the same. In the Netherlands a DIGITAL master suite is like 3 times the price of the US version.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Luckyo]

Because tapping phones is far more important than tapping personal computers?

And in what way does "tapping the source" which I assume you mean cables make you not want to tap the actual hardware that moves with people?

Heck, I'd rather have taps on hardware rather than cables. Far more efficient, far more relevant data.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Altrag]

00110010

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

but actually learning in a structured, tested way is how professionals learn things.

Working with, breaking and fixing real hands-on problems is how professionals learn.

Sitting in a classroom listening to how things are meant to work teaches nothing.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[WuphonsReach]

Not that simple. Research the differences between kinetic learners, visual learners and auditory learners. Different people find it easier to understand concepts when they are taught in a way that uses their preferred communication style.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Nivag064]

Hmm...

the Postgres database is free & sufficient for a lot of enterprise work...

Eclipse is a very good free IDE, that runs on Linux as well as other Operating Systems (including those peddled by Microsoft)

Linux is free and powers most servers

most mobile devices use Linux

The need for Microsoft software is declining!

Microsoft is finding new ways of encouraging Developers to leave them.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[davester666]

Well, you obviously are outside the USA, therefore Microsoft is obliged to forward everything you type/enter/use/view in any of their products to the NSA. And to do this, they need some big pipes and servers to keep the data flowing.

And I would start with putting tape over the camera in your laptop.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

FUD. If you're a web developer, the freeware Express edition is perfectly adequate. MS-SQL is quite expensive to run in production, but that's why Postgres/MySQL have been ported to Windows.

Also, fyi, ASP.NET MVC has a very similar API as Rails, so a 'port' would be pretty straight forward.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

And over here in Debian land we just type apt-get install build-essential.

Linux users can buy a supported version of Eclipse from IBM, which also runs about $20,000 a seat. (Or it used to, IBM won't even put the prices on their website.)

Surprise, companies want to fleece your dumb CIO regardless of what operating system you are using.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Technet is only for testing/education, so you certainly are not "legit" if you're running it in production. (But at least you're getting your warez from Microsoft so it isn't preloaded with keyloggers and malware.)

The only time I've found Technet to be actually useful in production is if you need to "downgrade" to an older version of Access to run a 3rd party application. The license allows this, but otherwise, where do you get the media?

I'm guessing MS would rather have people like you sign up for Action Pack, which is more of a marketing program that uses software as bait.

Re: This is mostly outdated service

[DigiShaman]

No, just the SMB market...for now. They already shit-canned their SBS lineup and replaced it with Server 2012 Essentials. Basically an amped up version of home server that hosts AD. And unlike SBS 2011, there is a 25 user CAL limit with no built-in Exchange. You can add one as another physical server or VM, but Exchange can't be installed directly on the same 2012 Essentials installation. MS wants the SMB market shoved to Office 365.

By the way, Office 365 hosted Exchange is nice. It's had some teething problem at launched (even after extensive BPOS experience), but it's a nice service.

Anyways, there you go. That's the future for SMBs and a giant middle-finger to small managed service providers.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[LordLimecat]

That lets you get a fully functional Microsoft Hyper V / Active Directory / Microsoft SQL lab? Amazing!

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[amaurea]

I think you've got an important nuance wrong here. Wikipedia's article on counterfeiting is quite reasonable, and I think most would agree with this characterization:

"To counterfeit means to imitate something. Counterfeit products are fake replicas of the real product. Counterfeit products are often produced with the intent to take advantage of the superior value of the imitated product. The word counterfeit frequently describes both the forgeries of currency and documents, as well as the imitations of clothing, handbags, shoes, pharmaceuticals, aviation and automobile parts, watches, electronics, software, works of art, toys. Counterfeit products tend to have fake company logos and brands. In the case of goods, it results in patent infringement or trademark infringement."

That is, counterfeiting has connotations of inferior imitation which derives its value from the reputation of the original. The laws most relevant for counterfeiting are typically trademark and patent laws, and I think the core concern is the harming of other's reputation by mislabeling products. Giving somebody a digital copy that is identical in every way does not fit this. That doesn't mean that it is legal, but let us not try to dilute terms by hammering square pegs into round holes.

Copyright infringement: Selling you illegal copies of Microsoft Windows.
Counterfeinting: Selling you some other piece of software that has been themed to fool you or your peers into thinking it is Windows.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Xest]

"When Microsoft pulls stunts like this, I take notice and I know I'm not the only one. Why would I want to invest my time and money into a sinking ship? I have 20 to 25 more years of development before I retire and right now I'm a .NET developer. C# is a pretty good language, but Microsoft is screwing up so much else, I don't really see how businesses are going to continue to support Microsoft. When those businesses drop Microsoft, it's going to go fast and my ability to get and keep a good paying job will go with it."

Why? I wouldn't sweat it. I'm primarily a C# .NET and C++ developer, but we had a requirement at the start of the year to produce a Java implementation of one of our C# solutions for use in the banking industry. Switching from knowledge of ASP.NET MVC to Java and Spring MVC wasn't particularly difficult in the slightest.

Spend a bit of time learning and playing with other languages in your spare time, you don't need to invest much. If the Microsoft world falls and C# .NET becomes free from employment prospects then Java is the language that's going to fill that void and it's a really simple jump over to Java from C#.

It's not really something worth worrying about, employment for C# roles is still on the increase despite being perhaps the most popular language already for new recruits across the globe. It'll become quite obvious when the decline starts, but it's certainly not there yet, not even close. Don't worry about it, just keep on doing what you're doing and do the odd check on the jobs market and so forth once a month or so to see if there are any changing trends in languages requested.

Microsoft may go but worrying about transferability of skills isn't something that you should let bother you if you're even half way skilled with C#.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[SplashMyBandit]

Actually, NZ does (offshore). [I'm another NZer]

However, Uncle Sam doesn't need our oil. It didn't need Iraq's and didn't get much of Iraq's either. With the hasty pull-out of Iraq after the US won (without staying to stabilize like it did in Germany, Korea or Japan) then other countries like China got the oil (not that I have much of a problem with the oil; it is pulling out and allowing Iran to dominate Iraq that was utterly senseless). Here's a reference for you:
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/the-war-for-oil-myth/ "The War for Oil Myth"

So you might want to check your meme dude - it was false a decade ago and is false now. It was promoted by the anti-war outfits of the political Left (who condemn the US as immoral if they intervene; and condemn the US as immoral if they do not intervene). So please be aware of how your natural repulsion to the carnage of war is being manipulated for the political advancement of the Left.

The US and Canda have heaps of recoverable oil these days (thanks to advanced in oil extraction technology, fracking, the Keystone project etc). In fact, by 2017 the US is projected to be the World's top oil producer. Here's a reference for you:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/12/us-iea-oil-report-idUSBRE8AB0IQ20121112

Of course, the political Left will continue to chant "No blood for oil" for a long time. They deal with feelings and concepts, not with facts (usually if an open-minded liberal is exposed to facts for actually does research you find they become "conservative" in outlook and are quickly shunned by the fact-lite "fellow travellers" they left behind).

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anarchduke]

Its my theory that Microsoft has gotten tired of being in the computer business and wants to get rid of all this software and hardware stuff. Ballmer has decided that Microsoft is in the perfect position to dominate the Amish technology sector.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anarchduke]

No that is how they learn to be professionals. After that, they are expected to be able to research new skills on their own.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anarchduke]

See we in the human race have this really cool ability. We can take one word and make it mean different things depending on context. Or are you also complaining because your car has a pointy thing made out of keratin sticking out from the steering wheel instead of a convenient sound making device to warn other drivers.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anarchduke]

When the client asks you for advice and you say:

1) "Well there is this open source thing, or you can go with the really neat Microsoft product that I am an expert at."

or

2) "Well Microsoft has this thing, but it costs a lot and a lot of IT pros are moving away from it. On the other hand there is this awesome open source thing that is free (or costs less) that I am an expert at. But I'd be wary of Microsoft, especially after all their really bad decisions; people are just not trusting them any more."

The client may say I want Microsoft, but with number 2 he is more likely to say, "Yes, I've seen that too, After all, I have a piece of crap Windows 8 computer at home. I replace my old piece of crap Windows Vista computer with it. So tell me more about this nifty open source thingy."

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[hlavac]

I'm not sure what's going on with MS these days. .... they are now giving their loyal developers the finger.

It is simple. They are hell bent on milking the Windows developers like Apple does with the 30% appstore cut. Since people have refused to put up with closing down the independent development and having to go thru the mandatory microsoft appstore to sell Windows apps, they are going to extract the money in some other way - in this case, making the serious development for Windows expensive.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Jaruzel]

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Technet has not been about the help pages for years - Technet was about providing legal software with keys for evaluation for as long as you kept your Technet sub going.

As other posters have said, 90-180 days is not enough to learn/evaluate platforms. I for one would not have learnt anything useful for Exchange 2010 if I had it running in sandbox lab with no real email flowing through it - I use it as my home email server, for 5 accounts. I migrated my previous Exchange 2003 installation into it, an arduous task that took weeks to complete correctly and I learnt SO much in the process - that's not something a dry lab environment could have provided. (and for those that say I'm falling foul of the T&Cs, I'm not - I don't class my home environment as a 'Production system'.)

Losing Technet for me is a big loss - my alternatives are MSDN (too expensive for non-contractor who likes to dabble/upskill), or the MS Partner programme (also fairly expensive and maybe not available to individuals). I might just say f*ck it, and migrate over to non MS software over the next few years, turning my back on 20+ years as an MS whore.

I think MS have lost the plot recently, and seem to be doing their best to alienate all their current userbase and developerbase.

-Jar

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

so in other words, base 10?

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[ubersoldat2k7]

Not totally related to Android by itself, but well, just to scare you a little:

http://www.beneaththewaves.net/Projects/Motorola_Is_Listening.html

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[MrMickS]

Your problem is, and always has been, one of support and the comfort factor. If you supply a Microsoft solution then the client has a warm fuzzy feeling because they know that, should you be unable to provide support, someone else will be able to.

If you go down the Open Source route this isn't quite as simple. Yes, you can find other places to provide support but without doubt they will recommend changes to fit in with their model. Windows is a safe option. This is especially true for small companies or ones with small IT needs and few internal staff. I know it doesn't fit with the OSS is wonderful view but its how people see things.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[MrNemesis]

It's a distinct possibility IMHO. Consider the following:

MS seems to be hell-bent on following the Apple path of computers as applications rather than general purpose tools open to all. The advantage of this is that you can curate the experience, and hence take a cut from any software, and eventually data, going in or out of this ecosystem.

MS is also heavily pushing their cloud solutions, and is already heavily involved in massaging regulations to make large-scale cloud deployments feasible from a legal standpoint. People's whose data is already held hostage in one of the many enterprise MS technologies will be prime targets for the MS sales reps to nudge them towards one of the various cloud offerings, either when the prices for the "buy once, use for a decade" locally installable software go through the roof or when MS chooses to simply stop making the software at all. A pessimistic, cynical, dare I say paranoid person might even think that with all the clout they have in manipulating the laws regarding cloud computing, they might even mandate a new raft of security ratings that for some inexplicable reason vastly favour the MS ecosystem for, say, the military, government and financial markets. Anyone wanting to integrate with any of those businesses would of course also need the same secure certification on the same secure network.

Both the "appification" of PCs and the push for the cloud are clear pointers towards rent-seeking behaviour in the medium-to-long-term. I'm not saying this is going to happen, but it certainly wouldn't be the first time that the whole hardware/software stack was owned by someone else and rented out to you for use on a terminal that you rented from them as well.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio Express is the same great product that the full version of Visual Studio is

Just not true.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

mirroring the production environment so we could test MS Updates and other software updates before we let them loose on the corporate desktops. We even used it to test the changes the developers would port from their dev systems before we put them on the production systems.

In that case you were actually in breach of your TechNet licenses, If you are testing, especially testing dev changes then you were required to have an MSDN license or a production license for the servers. TechNet is for product evaluations and product training only, not for test and dev work. So in other words you are no worse off today, what you were doing was unlicensed so you may as well continue the same unlicensed fashion and just hope you never get audited.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[KevReedUK]

Summery: You get fucked in the ass by Microsoft outside the US of A

Actually, it's all year round, not just in the summer!

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[alexgieg]

It was promoted by the anti-war outfits of the political Left

Wrong. It was also promoted by libertarians and classic liberals, who, last I checked, are in the right, the political compass notwithstanding.

But you're right that it wasn't because of the oil directly. It was because of the currency used to buy oil: the US dollar. Most of USA's prosperity comes from having made a deal with oil-producing countries so that they'd only accept the US dollar. This forces every other country in the world to obtain US dollars for their oil-purchasing needs. And they can only get US dollars by selling stuff to the USA, which can then pick and choose the most stuff for the least price, all the while exporting their unending, massive inflation-producing printing of fiat money, so that it doesn't turn into intra-US inflation.

Iraq became a target the moment Saddam Hussein decided to start accepting other currencies in a so-called basket of currencies. Once countries could start purchasing oil in Euro and other currencies, thus unlinking themselves from US-dollar dependency, USA's inflation-exporting would come crashing down. The US would see a wave of untold trillions of dollars flowing back into the country, its economy crashing in a such a way that the 2008 recession would seem like a pale shadow. Hence, a war to destroy the immediate threat and to send a warning to other oil producers: do not weaken the US dollar, OR ELSE...

But such a move only purchases time. If the US government were smart it'd go all out trying to fix this world-oil-currency issue before it crashes on its own. Iran is currently also playing with the basket of currencies idea. And what do we see? Instead of fixing the root problem, the US government goes forth singing "La-la-la-la! Let's have another war!" Maybe it'll work again this time, who knows? But at some point it'll stop working, and hyperinflation and true worldwide economic crash it'll be. And then the real war will begin.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

This is slashdot, we use base 2, not base 10.

Exactly! We use base 10 on slashdot!

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay, yet another shill account.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[martijn hoekstra]

And over here in Debian land we just type apt-get install build-essential.

And then you have GCC, Make and an outdated version of EGlibC. I'll admit that is easier than on windows, but getting the same stuff on windows isn't exactly involved either. Comparing that to an MSDN subscription is - regardless what you think of it's price - quite silly.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Gun laws exist because arms non-proliferation works: you don't bring a knife to a gun fight, but you don't bring a gun to a knife fight either. They have little to do with stopping criminals obtaining guns (even though guns do end up being harder to source in countries with stricter gun controls), but everything to do with making criminals think they don't need guns.

It's taking advantage of an instinct built into most mammals: you don't get more violent than you need to, because that just increases your chances of something nasty happening to you in return, and even criminals don't want to die.

All geeks would benefit from a modicum of psychology, anthropology and evolutionary biology. They may not explain everything from first principles, but they will give you far more complex insights into human behaviour than binary soundbites.

Re: This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on. Do you really expect any company that sees the writing on the wall in terms of their traditional market drying up to just stand there and go "oh well, we were dominant before, but we're weak in the new market - let's just not bother trying"?

DEC?

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[cHiphead]

Visual Studio? Do you even know what TechNet was for? It was not just a cheaper MSDN, it was something that reinforced Microsoft's position with IT pros and provided important access to new and old operating systems and applications. Visual Studio was the least important piece of the pie for many TechNet subscribers.

This decision will hinder adoption of future MS technology and eliminates a revenue source, as there will now be no revenue for the limited time demo based testing environments. Timed demos, aka "Evaluations," just don't cut it and the loss of Technet is the loss of an insanely important resource for IT.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[VGPowerlord]

Visual Studio Express editions are not a substitute for the real, combined Visual Studio You-Paid-How-Much? Edition(no "s").

If you have a solution that contains a database project, a C# WCF service, and a web application using Razor, you can't use the Express editions to manage that in any useful or meaningful way. VS Express is either a demo or is for "developers" that don't care about sane architecture and aren't doing this for money. It is most certainly not "the same great product that the full version of Visual Studio is".

And a subscription to Office (only!) costs about what TechNet did, so that's in the less-value-for-more-money category, too.

The first paragraph implies that VS Ultimate is the only edition that can do this, but I'm pretty sure VS Professional can handle it as well.

So, apparently you do need that "s" after all.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you provide a URL pointing specifically to where you bought a MSDN subscription for $400? I know there are discounts out there. I've seen them. I'd like to investigate the specifics of your subscription for myself.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Better get a time machine then. That was 2006.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah sorry.

This is slashdot, we use base 10, not base 10.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft, are you listening?

Microsoft: "To Slashdot article comments? No"

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[monzie]

Do you understand the difference between a port and a rewrite??

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Restrictions are in functionality. There's not much you can do with free VS.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

True. But why did we start talking about Visual Studio? There is no Visual Studio in TechNet, it is only in MSDN. And there are no free products for what is available in TechNet.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Get the hint. MS doesn't want you anymore.

Write some Metro/Surface apps or GTFO!

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Gadget_Guy]

Counterfeinting: Selling you some other piece of software that has been themed to fool you or your peers into thinking it is Windows.

The counterfeiting being discussed refers to the media and accompanying documentation. The actual software is real, albeit illegally acquired from Technet.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Shirley Marquez]

New Zealand has a 15% GST that accounts for some of the difference. Not all of it, however.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

And you got those sentences out of which MS publication? I recognise the writing style!

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[DrVxD]

Microsoft, are you listening?

Probably not.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Its still "base 10" you noob! :-P

Re: This is mostly outdated service

[zlives]

it just costs a lot more for the SMB over time. and why would users not switch to google apps.. its atleast available on their tablets and phones...
I think MS is yet again shooting themselves in the foot, but whats new.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

hey I go to training... mostly just to fuck around for a couple of weeks a year and get paid for it. but as far as learning a product... maybe just to learn MS marketing blurbs.
if MS products were perfect maybe a structured learning environment would work. but most times with all the patches and the caveats and bugs... you can't learn it in a classroom.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[SplashMyBandit]

Wrong. It was also promoted by libertarians and classic liberals, who, last I checked, are in the right, the political compass notwithstanding.

I'd be interested to see which libertarians and classic liberals promoted the "no blood for oil" meme. I'd me most grateful if you had a few links handy showing this. Even if they did, I'm sill right - it was a meme originating from the Left (if if not exclusively).

Thanks for the rest of your post. Yes, this was one of many factors that made the decision to go to war. However, it was not the biggest factor. Consider this, GW Bush was telling the truth about WMD as far as he knew it. When the Coalition went it they searched and searched but did not find the WMDs (of course not, they had been moved to Syria by that stage). Think about it for a moment, the US had every reason to fake the presence of these but they did not. They must have believed they would find them. The "GW Bush" lied is as much a bad meme as the "US grabbing oil" meme. There were many reasons for GW Bush fulfilling what Bill Clinton got approval from Congress for - and the reason you presented was another motivating factor (thanks for re-iterating it so clearly).

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio Express is the same great product that the full version of Visual Studio is, but is great for beginners. Visual Studio as a whole is a great product too. And, MSDN subscription is there too.

Honest question: How much were you paid by Microsoft for that little bit of advertising?

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[hairyfeet]

Oh bullshit, but what should I expect from an anon coward, I swear there needs to be a way to just wipe all ac posts from your sight forever without affecting downmodded LEGIT posts.

But just FYI you can easily buy a pound of dope straight from the border, you got the cash you could probably buy your own sex slave while you were at it, do you REALLY think your gun laws would affect any criminal in the slightest?

If you have a border with ZERO security your stupid laws mean exactly dick, hell the whole reason we had the treasonous false flag known as fast and Furious is they found out the cartels weren't buying american guns, they were buying ex-Soviet stuff because they could get full auto and RPGs and grenades and shit. So do you HONESTLY believe that a stupid ass law would keep ANY criminal from just going up to the dealer and getting a gun to go with his 8-ball?

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[terjeber]

Clueless drivel.

Re:This is mostly outdated service

[mysidia]

Do they really expect that to happen?

Microsoft has become like Apple. Don't ask users what they want; if you get negative feedback, and them telling you what they don't want -- ignore that, and give it to them anyways. Don't give your users what they ask for.

Evidence?
Exhibit A: Removal of start menu in Windows 8
Exhibit B: Reintroduction of 'start tile' in Windows 8.1, BUT still no start menu

I think the same story could be true eventually for on-premise applications. And the Windows desktop operating systems themselves moving to the cloud as well -- becoming more iOS-like; your OS becomes just a web browser remotely controlled by things running in Azure.

there are a lot of legal, financial, and regulatory reasons for on-premise deployments

Companies' management can be persuaded to look the other way in regards to legal and financial reasons. They can be persuaded that the IT folks are just using the excuses about financial/legal reasons as FUD to try and protect their jobs.

The cloud providers can trumpet around their ISO security certifications and 3rd party audit results as "proof" that their cloud has compliance with security regulations and provides a safer environment than on-premise; By definition according to these vendors, if you meet certain standards, and you can check off all the items in pre-defined lists, then your cloud is secure.

Most private and public companies don't put their networks through the same standards. So the cloud vendors are able to produce something that looks very impressive on paper: only because it's part of their revenue model that they be able to market their cloud environment as "secure" and applications running on it as "compliant by definition", or such and such.

Re: This is mostly outdated service

[Anonymous Coward]

Android is, Apple isnt

Real Slashdotters don't care!

[Anonymous Coward]

Real Slashdotters don't care about Microsoft TechNet you insensitive clod!

Office?

[Anonymous Coward]

So where will I get office for all my PC's for cheap now? Technet was a great, somewhat legal way to use MS software at home for a decent price.

Re:Office?

[CronoCloud]

For home use, where 100 percent perfect compatibility for some of the more esoteric features isn't really needed, there is this thing calle LibreOffice. You may have heard of it.

Heck if you don't need Calc, you can use AbiWord.

Re:Office?

[X0563511]

I guess you get to either pay-up, or go cold-turkey and join the Libreoffice club.

Oh look, MS is shooting themselves in the foot again.

Re:Office?

[Anonymous Coward]

For even more data goodness, the latest LibreOffice update(v4.04) now opens xml files I couldn't open(without MS) for the last 6 months. Yay!

How the hell has Ballmer stayed at the helm this long? He should have been booted after Vista... or Nokia/WinPhone fizzle... or 8... or 8.1...
Boggles the mind.

Re:Office?

[Drakonblayde]

Or you go find your eyepatch and go raiding with the merry pirate brigade!

A monumentally bad idea

[onyxruby]

This has got be the third dumbest idea Microsoft has had in the last decade (Windows 8.0 and the f*cking the start button in Windows 8.1 being the first two). Microsoft Technet was a relatively cheap way for people that made a career out of Microsoft products to get their products for a reasonable price.

This allowed for two very important things, first it allowed for the ecosystem to be license compliant which made it easier to stay in the habit of being license compliant while at work work. The second thing it did was allow workers exposure to products to gain access for skills development. Workers that have exposure to products tends to push for the products that they are familiar with at work.

It's all about the ecosystem, and TechNet was absolutely brilliant for supporting the ecosystem of workers that support their products in the work place. Sure, you can follow their suggestion to switch over to the much more expensive MSDN subscription, but for most workers that is simply too expensive for a personal salary. Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot for exploitation of the very people the very workers that make their success possible to begin with in the first place.

Re:A monumentally bad idea

[rennerik]

I think what they're trying to do is move people over to the evaluations, which is really what TechNet was *supposed* to be for. Sure, the license keys you got with it allowed you to "indefinitely evaluate" their software (in a lab environment, or whatever), but with some trials lasting as long as half a year, it's kind of become redundant.

Re:A monumentally bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

This. This so so much. It is so stupid what they are doing.

I just knew someone pretty much the other day saying how he was thinking of getting in to doing exactly this, but now that TechNet is going, he is very likely going to not do that at all now.

Microsoft seem to want all the smaller developers to just die, even if they were WORKING for them or with their products.

They seriously need to fire whatever ass is actually making these decisions, they are genuinely terrible at business.
I can't even comprehend what moron decided this was a good idea.

Re:A monumentally bad idea

[HideyoshiJP]

Not really. Not if you have several projects over the next few years and don't want to have to set up your Server 2012 domain over and over and over again...

Re:A monumentally bad idea

[bill_mcgonigle]

This has got be the third dumbest idea Microsoft has had in the last decade

Hey, as someone who competes against proprietary solutions (including Microsoft) with Free Software solutions, I wholeheartedly endorse this change!

What I frequently see is businesses that hire a developer to code a solution, and that developer has Technet, so he chooses whatever technology he thinks is best on there, and then when the customer gets ready to deploy it, they find a chain of Microsoft dependencies that all need licensing and CAL's, and often get roped into a software maintenance agreement for 5+digits over their initial cost estimate. Often it gets big enough to require new hardware and a virtualization solution too.

I get "second-opinion" work from them, but it's often too late to do anything else. I've heard of some (that I don't work with) who 'just get Technet' too.

If there's a silver lining, it's that I often get first-crack at the next project. But either way, this is a great decision on Microsoft's part as far as I'm concerned!

Re:A monumentally bad idea

[s.petry]

It is a way to turn a quick buck and show the shareholders that MS can make money with something other than XBox. Let us look at the long list of garbage shareholders are dealing with at MS.

Windows Phone is a dud, Windows 8 was simply horrible and I'm not sure if they can make it work. They keep pumping money into advertising, and people keep pulling out the old MAC vs. PC commercial telling them how stupid that tactic was and still is.

Server is still losing market share to Linux and Desktops are losing market share to tablets, phones, and MAC computers. It was never a boom town, but Exchange and Outlook was cheaper than Lotus Notes so people went that route.

IIS never saw huge adoption, but the reduced server footprint means that more webapp servers are moving to something other than MS products. Office and other productivity software has been stagnant for over a decade.

Bing is still a joke, and as with Windows 8 they keep paying people to tell you how good it is when we all see what the search engine market looks like.

So this is a way of them screwing people in order to turn a quick buck. Even if it shoots their own foot off, they don't care. I have two words for people thinking that they do care, which is "Windows 8".

All in all, I believe that this is a good thing! While it has taken a long time for justice to happen, and the failure of the US Justice system to make happen, Capitalism is killing off a monopoly all on it's own. It's going to be a slow and painful death, but a well deserved one. It also shows that a corrupt justice system just makes things worse! If they would have done their job in the first place and chunked them up like AT&T, they might still be thriving as several separate companies. (I emphasize the "might" there because it is a rhetorical fallacy to make a claim.)

Re: A monumentally bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that use of technetium was exactly the plan. But now its time for those developers to pony up for the more expensive option.... But that means they can make more expensive SOLUTIONS too! Profit!

Re:A monumentally bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

What I frequently see is businesses that hire a developer to code a solution, and that developer has Technet, so he chooses whatever technology he thinks is best on there, and then when the customer gets ready to deploy it, they find a chain of Microsoft dependencies that all need licensing and CAL's, and often get roped into a software maintenance agreement for 5+digits over their initial cost estimate. Often it gets big enough to require new hardware and a virtualization solution too.

Hopefully this will cause more developers to look at other technology chains. Specifically I mean open source solutions.

Re: A monumentally bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy and cheap option for anyone is to sign up as a partner. Costs about the same as a TechNet subscription, but gives you actual full licenses for production use AND the option of a cheaper MSDN subscription.

Re:A monumentally bad idea

[Brulath]

It's weird, but I've actually found myself liking Bing's image search feature. The interface allows me to quickly skip through enlarged views of the thumbnails without the jarring expand/collapse animation that Google image search uses. It also allows you to disable the safe searching feature, which Google doesn't seem to permit without an explicit search anymore (sometimes filters aren't perfect). It doesn't do reverse image searches (that I've discovered thus far), but I can still use Google image search for that if it's ever necessary to find an image's source. It seems to rank images differently to Google also, so searching for the same thing using both should provide a better range of results.

The rest, of course, is quite bad. Bing's web search isn't spectacular, and Windows 8 is only tolerable with Start8 and DisplayFusion, but there are a couple of good products still remaining.

Re:A monumentally bad idea

[mysidia]

This allowed for two very important things, first it allowed for the ecosystem to be license compliant which made it easier to stay in the habit of being license compliant while at work work. The second thing it did was allow workers exposure to products to gain access for skills development. Workers that have exposure to products tends to push for the products that they are familiar with at work.

I probably already mentioned it, but the Cynic in me tells me Microsoft maybe wants fewer people having a career around their products, so there is less competition against their cloud.

If there are fewer Microsoft folks: they will have an easier time pushing their Office and online Exchange cloud services as cost-saving measures, over hiring a dwindling supply of workers familiar with administration of MS software.

If you want to make on-premise less attractive; it makes sense to do whatever you can to undercut the abilities of consultants and IT admins servicing on-premise deployments or competing clouds.

The IT admins/consultants with artificially reduced effectiveness get fired and put out to pasture, in favor of the greener fields of Azure

Re:A monumentally bad idea

[mysidia]

Not really. Not if you have several projects over the next few years and don't want to have to set up your Server 2012 domain over and over and over again...

One of the things they will probably fix one day, is if you're content with a notification experience and/or (with some of the OSes) a reboot every 24 hours, you can probably evaluate for longer by not activating, or by ignoring the expiration

Re:A monumentally bad idea

[Drakonblayde]

Honestly, I'm a little suspicious that this is a ploy. Announce a major change, cause an outrage, then back up and say 'ok, ok, we've listened to the customers, we're not going to kill TechNet, but we are going to have to make some changes....'

Re:A monumentally bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows phone probably is a dud in the consumer space and it's a damn shame.

But I wouldn't rule it out just yet: BlackBerry is floundering, Apple is Apple, and that leaves Samsung trying to get into the business side of smart phones.
Microsoft *could* carve a very nice niche for themselves if they can get their enterprise/business focus together.

Re:A monumentally bad idea

[MTEK]

And for those of us used to MSDN, it's costing more and covers fewer products. To get Office, for example, requires their Premium subscription ($6,119.00 US).

Re:A monumentally bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

show the shareholders that MS can make money with something other than XBox.

Pretty sure the whole console business has always been losing money for MS.

Will be missed

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one am a TechNet Subscriber and I am very disappointed at the loss of this wonderful tool. I missed the boat on a Free TechNet in 2000 when I earned my first MCSE ( They changed the policy a couple of months before). Now it will be gone. Really 30-180 trials do not fit the need in how the product was intended and how it is being used. I keep a full non-production environment in a test lab at home. Exchange, Web, SQL etc. When new products come out that is where the go first. Reloading 180 days is not an option. Neither is footing the cost for all of those products and MSDN costs too much as well.

1998?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had TechNet before 1998. They would send out a disc every month or quarter and is was just a knowledgebase. They had some betas and evals, but nothing compared to MSDN. I think it only cost $150 per year per person. Is this TechNet they are mentioning a different thing? I know I had it before 1998 because I had it for years before leaving a job in 1998. And it wasn't something new.

Re:1998?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah those subscription CDs date back to at least 1995. Maybe '98 is when they put it on the web, though?

They're shooting themselves in the foot

[Vrtigo1]

Technet was very reasonably priced at a couple hundred bucks a year and that got you access to almost everything Microsoft makes. Of course, you couldn't use it for production, but for testing, etc it was great. As a sysadmin, I don't want to pay 5-10x as much for an MSDN subscription because I just want the software, I could care less about the development stuff.

So at the end of the day, what Microsoft will see is less money from me when I turn to other sources to get the MS software I need for testing purposes. I know guys at other companies with MSDN universal subscriptions and they're happy to share their login info.

Re:They're shooting themselves in the foot

[Anonymous Coward]

This has the smell of MBA all over it. Some pencil dick middle saw the technet service service and decided to can it because it wasn't a "profit center" or thought it competed with real licensing, or it just wasn't profitable as a whole.

Nevermind that being able to test millions of dollars of software leads directly to sales of millions of dollars of software. Fuck. They should be GIVING away technet subscriptions.

Re:They're shooting themselves in the foot

[hairyfeet]

Meh most of the guys i know ended up either going MSDN or just getting pirate version, hell the pirate versions of some of their stuff is frankly better than what they offer (they really need to hire the guys that make the "Tiny" versions, stomps the hell out of their embedded products) so it won't be a GREAT loss, but it does show just how far disconnect has infected their company. They seem to be cutting their noses to spite their face and burning bridges where frankly it doesn't make any damned sense. technet was not only a site for software but for tools and "how to" instructions so losing a one stop shop for no real reason just doesn't make sense.

Re:They're shooting themselves in the foot

[gbjbaanb]

They're doing something similar with MSDN, now to get a couple of new toys you need to get the Premium edition (which is 5x the cost of Professional). eg. To get TFS, you can have Professional... but to get all the features like the code review stuff they've been heavily plugging, you need Premium.

I think its just a ploy to squeeze more revenue out of us all, without us noticing until its too late.

Re:They're shooting themselves in the foot

[Anonymous Coward]

Disagree about the MBA part. This likely goes way up the food chain. If they don't backpedal (which of course they always do), then this is a new Microsoft that we're watching unfold. Meaning they're panicking badly and the new ventures are in much worse shape than originally thought (mobile, tablets, Window Store, etc.).

Re:They're shooting themselves in the foot

[Anonymous Coward]

I know guys at other companies with MSDN universal subscriptions and they're happy to share their login info.

Clearly, you are a Terrorist. Conspiracy to commit EULA violations is a felony, and the NSA has probably already informed their DMCA tiger team of your whereabouts. Prepare to "disappear" to the Guantanamo Bay Resort & Spa.

Re:They're shooting themselves in the foot

[Anonymous Coward]

> Of course, you couldn't use it for production

ROFLMAO. Technet was probably the best free in-kind compensation benefit tech companies could give their IT staff. Technet licenses couldn't be used for commercial purposes, but when it came to your HOME computer(s)... well... Technet was basically your personal golden ticket into the Microsoft Candy Store, where everything was free (as in beer). Does anybody think it was truly a coincidence that they'd only allow you to have a single CD key for Office per year, and would allow you to use it twice before refusing to activate it anymore, but would allow you to request a nearly UNLIMITED number of CD keys for the latest version of Windows within the first 120 days after it got released, as long as you didn't request more than a few keys at a time, and activated most of them before requesting the next batch?

Hint: the Office installation & activation was how they knew which two computers were the ones you personally used at home.

Microsoft knew DAMN WELL that those Windows keys were being used to install their latest version of Ultimate on every computer you personally made bodily contact with... and they were cool with it, as long as the statistical pattern of your activations didn't make it look like you were installing them for complete strangers, for profit, or for your employer. Microsoft's activation server knew what the GUID of every laptop sold in the first world looked like, and knew EXACTLY what your trail of activations would look like if you were installing it on your own computers & some close family members' computers, vs installing them on computers for resale to random strangers.

Let's start with your computers. Those were the easy ones. You only got 2 Office-activations, so they went to your laptop & desktop PCs. As noted, Microsoft already knew the MAC addresses of every laptop sold in the free world. A little BIOS-probing, and they knew your main desktop computer was an Asus/Gigabyte/whatever motherboard... and that whatever it was, it was almost certainly close to top of the line back when it was bought.

So, how'd they know if you were a reseller trying to sell whitebox PCs with Technet-licensed copies of Windows, or a small business, or a school/government agency? Easy... you installed Windows on identical cheap $39 motherboards with bargain-basement integrated video, slow hard drives, and value-line AMD CPUs. They were activated under your IP address, but thereafter contacted Windows Update from IP addresses scattered far & wide, and never came home or shared an IP address with your laptop ever again.

How'd they differentiate those from your parents' computers the weekend you went to see them? They knew your name. They knew your laptop's GUID. A little cross-correlation to find the GUID of every PC running behind the same NAT'ed IP address as your laptop contacting Windows Update within the past 72 hours, and they've just scored a home run. Your parents probably even have the same last name as you, and activated Windows on their own computers when they bought them months or years ago. Verdict: harmless non-lost sales.

Likewise, they could STILL filter out the background noise, and identify the 2 or 3 computers a year you might have built from scratch for friends or family members. For one thing, they all probably had different motherboards. For another, they WEREN'T bottom of the line. People selling whitebox computers with pirated copies of Windows don't put large SSDs, 7200RPM 2TB+ hard drives, high-end discrete videocards, and 16GB ram into them, nor do they put Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge CPUs in them, overclock them, run them with huge fans that keep the CPUs 5-10 degrees or more cooler than stock (remember, Windows knows how hot your CPU is), or otherwise build systems that aren't as blatantly cheap as possible. Once again, when you're Microsoft and know what shit & high-end hardware looks like to the CPU and sensors, it's not all that hard to pick out the "goodwill ambassador" copies

Re:They're shooting themselves in the foot

[WuphonsReach]

They're doing something similar with MSDN, now to get a couple of new toys you need to get the Premium edition (which is 5x the cost of Professional). eg. To get TFS, you can have Professional... but to get all the features like the code review stuff they've been heavily plugging, you need Premium.

It provides me with much amusement as I watch developers / companies opt for the Microsoft solution because they got a good upfront deal. There's all sorts of special programs where Microsoft gives you the software for near free if you are of a certain company size, etc.

Then, once you've tied yourself to their software stack, you no longer qualify for the deep discount.

So many of these companies would be far better served by the modular nature of Open Source solutions. Solars / Linux / BSD are all pretty interchangeable, so if you pick a software stack that runs on all three you have a lot more choice and stability long-term.

Re:They're shooting themselves in the foot

[gbjbaanb]

I know I'm preaching to the converted here but...

absolutely. I see a lot of companies right now moving to TFS for their source control needs, and lets be fair - TFS2012+ is a lot better than the shite the old versions were, but.... its very integrated, cloyingly so. I know a few people say "yes but you can still use jenkins for builds" etc, but forget to say that you cannot hook the results of the builds back into the TFS summary and other panes which suddenly makes it less of an option. This doesn't just apply to systems either, if you use something like nUnit for your tests, you'll have a hard time re-integrating the results into the integrated view.

so MS is subtly persuading everyone to move wholesale to their product. I know this isn't anything unusual, but I am seeing a lot of it wrt TFS at the moment. Something needs to be done!

Captain obvious strikes...

[Synerg1y]

For an annual subscription fee of a few hundred dollars, subscribers get the right to download virtually all of the desktop and server software Microsoft sells, with multiple product keys. The software is licensed for evaluation purposes only, but that restriction is part of the license agreement and not enforced in the software itself.

Could it be they're trying to cut pirating / abuse as a business entity to raise license sales? Nah, it's a conspiracy to spite the users.. ya that's it.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be they're trying to cut pirating / abuse as a business entity to raise license sales? Nah, it's a conspiracy to spite the users.. ya that's it.

If so, it is once again proof that all businesses are only capable of "preventing pirating/abuse" by hurting their paying customers, which generally also does absolutely nothing to stop pirating or abuse.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be they're trying to cut pirating / abuse as a business entity to raise license sales?

Could it? Let's see...

With technet: Microsoft makes $200/year off me, and my test lab (that isn't connected to the LAN let alone the Internet) is completely non-pirate software.

Without technet: Microsoft makes $200/year less off me, and my test lab (that isn't connected to the LAN let alone the Internet) will now consist of pirated software.

If their goal was to lower piracy to raise profits, they sure as hell just cause the exact opposite situation to happen!

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[couchslug]

Pirating will happen anyway, and MSFT of all software companies knows (or knew) how to benefit from "market chumming".

Seems they forgot how Office 97 slaughtered the competition by being so convenient to copy from the CDs borrowed from work.

I want to see MSFT screw users good and hard because I don't care for the company. Large hardware dongles keyed to each application would be just dandy.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be they're trying to cut pirating / abuse as a business entity to raise license sales?

Of course... but they're cutting off their nose to spite their face. Pirates already pirated, and will continue to do so.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[Synerg1y]

Right... they look at how much they're making on technet, and then look at a estimate of how much they may be losing when the test environment becomes the production environment and licenses aren't upgraded. When B is greater than A, the program gets cut.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Could it be they're trying to cut pirating / abuse as a business entity to raise license sales? Nah, it's a conspiracy to spite the users.. ya that's it.

Of course they don't intend to spite the users - nobody running a company ever puts fucking over their users as a business goal. It's disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

The problem happens when they forget to include "not fucking over users" as a business goal and so they end up doing just that as a side-effect of otherwise well-intentioned decisions.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[Synerg1y]

I'm sure they acknowledge that they're going to lose some users over this. However, from a business POV the users they're losing are bottom tier for them, so they are indicating that they're losing more from piracy and unlicensed production use from this program than what they're gaining from the users.

A few bad apples don't spoil the bunch, but when most of them are rotten, you throw it away right?

It's also unreasonable to expect a commercial publicly traded business to continue all programs forever, their loyalty isn't to the user, but to the stock holder... and if the stock holders are losing money... well they're the most important from a business POV.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[Stormin]

I was an MSDN subscriber for 11 years. I wrote applications for many clients that were Microsoft based, and those clients spent significant sums on licenses for their servers, CALs, etc.

Over the years though it got harder and harder to justify the cost of MSDN, especially as they did all these things to restrict availability of product keys, etc.

I decided not to renew my MSDN subscription. I only have one client left using a MS stack, and they will be migrated to a Linux / Java solution shortly. They will save a significant amount of money on licenses, and I will save a significant amount of money on MSDN subscriptions.

So long Microsoft, it was fun while it lasted.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

A few bad apples don't spoil the bunch, but when most of them are rotten, you throw it away right?`

You are not using that metaphor correctly, pretty much completely backwards.
The saying is, âoeeven a few bad apples will quickly ruin the whole barrel.â

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[zlives]

so the person that was going to "steal" licenses by using a test enviro, is now not going to download a hacked version. seems logical and reasonable.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[zlives]

the loss monies from xbone debacle is forcing some marketing genius to force "upgrade" the technet subscription to msdn.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[hackus]

NOW piracy is a problem?

Bit late in the game tisn't it?

No, something else is up and I think it is the gradual decline of Microsoft as we are seeing defensive moves all across the board to make any sort of profit.

I am not sure how people on Slashdot feel about the cloud, but the idea of allowing a third party company store all of your private and critical data for your organization is like out of some sort of 1984 B movie knock off from Hollywood.

So a cloud substitute won't work for trying out Microsoft software.

I do know, there are lots of LINUX alternatives now and it might be a good idea for some of you proprietary guys to buy the religion of transparent software in the open source world for networking, operating systems and application stacks.

Besides, you never can tell who is in that binary DLL on your server.

Could be no one, or it could be somebody you don't want looking at your stuff.

Seriously, given the environment we are heading into it is worth a thought to start building infrastructure with more source code and less binaries you can't make or produce yourself.

-Hack

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[gblfxt]

or, pushing for piracy! that way they put support costs in the pirates lap!

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[mysidia]

When B is greater than A, the program gets cut.

That's Phase I. For Phase II, depending on their estimates, they might (or might not) start exercising their right to a physical audit of technet subscribers to identify potential compliance issues.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[Anonymous Coward]

All they've done is move me from a paying subscriber via Technet to an underground pirate. I'm not paying the ridiculous fees for MSDN, and I'm not satisfied with trial time limits.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[Synerg1y]

I think you've got that backwards, you'd want to audit the program and THEN cancel it, not cancel it and audit it.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[Synerg1y]

Pirated versions are a lot easier to detect and can be disabled via update.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Piracy? Maybe, But I'd wager that I'm not alone in saying that the affordable "treasure trove" of TechNet downloads and Software Keys that I personally enjoy has generated thousands of dollars spent on additional licensing. I have provided huge amounts of input, suggestions, support, and expertise work, and to family and friends resulting directly from my use of the many TechNet-obtained products.

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, ok that was funny

Re:Captain obvious strikes...

[mysidia]

I think you've got that backwards, you'd want to audit the program and THEN cancel it, not cancel it and audit it.

I don't mean audit the program; I meant audit any end users with significant assets for compliance with the license terms. The penalty for noncompliance with software license terms is not cancellation of benefits, it's paying a large sum.

If I do recall correctly, there are audit rights that continue for a period, even after the program is cancelled, or the user ends their subscription.

DEVELOPERS!! DEVELOPERS!! DEVELOPERS!!

[Anonymous Coward]

FUCK YOU!!

Morons in charge.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Bob! I've got a great idea! You know how we've been looking for a way to alienate our professional costumers even more?
Yeah Bill! That Metro UI was awesome! Completely un-manageable in an Enterprise network, of no use to existing software, and a gaping security hole all in one!
Well Bob you'll love this! You know that really useful service we provide to admins and IT departments that lets them have access to our vast library of software for testing and evaluation? You know, so they don't have to cough up millions of dollars in duplicate licenses for the their test environment? Let's can it!
That's brilliant Bill! I knew it was a great idea to put you in charge of the xbox one project!

Re:Morons in charge.

[zlives]

i new microsoft BOB got a promotion to marketing.

Gotta hate equally.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

Microsoft hasn't been hating on their partners enough lately, too much on their customers.
Thanks for remembering us, Microsoft!

Re:Gotta hate equally.

[TheRecklessWanderer]

It's our turn I guess. My company has MAPS (Microsoft Action Pack Subscription) which will expire in february. Had it for 10 years. I sent an email asking if they were for real, and I got a message back along the lines "We are no longer accepting emails, go to the forums". We don't spend all that much with microsoft, maybe 20 or 30K a month as a VAR, and this just feels like a kick in the teeth.

That sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN -$13,299.00

That really burns if your company doesnt pay for it automatically.
So any of you thinking of coming to the dark side? $0 jdk, $0 eclipse? or $499 for a commercial liscense of intellij?

Re:That sucks

[Lunix Nutcase]

TechNet subscriptions don't include Visual Studio anyways. So your comparison to the highest priced MSDN tier is pretty disingenuous. If you need dev tools you would have always needed to buy at least the MSDN Visual Studio Professional which is $1200.

Re:That sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

So you guys didn't even have tools to develop a website? I assumed it was the full deal. Was it just the servers evaluation licenses that it paid for?

Re:That sucks

[cjjjer]

TechNet was never about developers it basically was full MS software (Servers/Business) with a non-production license (no trial limit). You used it for integration/upgrade testing or trying out new software. All for a few hundred bucks a year.

technet demise

[jdmuskrat]

bye bye MS, hello Linux! MS steals all there ideas anyway, so why bother with them. except for my current job, i would not touch MS. glad I retire in a couple of years.

Whatever happened to...

[lord_mike]

"Developers! Developers! Developers!" I guess that with their obsession of trying to be everything Apple, they've decided to abandon everything that made Microsoft successful. Is the management team just panicking and throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks?

Re:Whatever happened to...

[kimvette]

Is the management team just panicking and throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks?

if a Ballmer looks like a monkey, walks like a monkey, and throws poo like a monkey. . .

Re:Whatever happened to...

[Lunix Nutcase]

TechNet wasn't for developers as it didn't include things like Visual Studio.

Re:Whatever happened to...

[Anonymous Coward]

But a monkey doesn't throw chairs.

Re:Whatever happened to...

[bloodhawk]

TechNet was not for developers. That is MSDN and hasn't been changed. TechNet was for product evals only, It has been abused by many as a cheap way to get software and keys for which they usually fool themselves into believing they paid for TechNet therefore they aren't breaching any licensing.

shooting self in foot?

[roc97007]

> Unfortunately, the days of a cheap, unlimited Microsoft development stack are coming to an end.

...followed by a sharp decrease in Microsoft development.

Re:shooting self in foot?

[Tony Isaac]

With Android, iOS, and Web development taking center stage these days, that decrease in Microsoft development is already well under way.

Re:shooting self in foot?

[roc97007]

With Android, iOS, and Web development taking center stage these days, that decrease in Microsoft development is already well under way.

Exactly. So this would be a perfect time to eliminate your cheap, unlimited development stack.

If you were trying to commit corporate suicide.

Part of the grand scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

As microsoft is transforming itself to a SaaS company (particularly for enterprises) there will be less and less need for TechNet. This is but a step to get a segment (lower-end) of the enterprise market thinking in that way.

Best Time to Switch to the Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the days of a cheap, unlimited Microsoft development stack are coming to an end.

Fortunately, other cheap/free unlimited stacks are readily available:

Android

Java

Linux Mint

So long Microsoft, don't let the door hit you in your parity bits on the way out.

Herding all devs over to Azure

[Freshly Exhumed]

Rod Trent over at http://windowsitpro.com/windows/dead-microsoft-technet speculates on the TechNet shutdown that "...in a Cloud world, this makes a lot of sense. Those wanting to test new software can simply spin-up a Microsoft Azure-hosted VM, completely configured for the application they want to try-out or through the use of TechNet Virtual Labs. These days, using Microsoft Azure, a testing lab can be setup and running in minutes with just a mouse click."

Plausible, but risky if/when devs don't like it.

Re:Herding all devs over to Azure

[PRMan]

If you don't mind your dev code out in the cloud. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Herding all devs over to Azure

[Starteck81]

Those labs are fun for a quickie, like a short test drive, but if you want to do anything more serious than take it for a spin around the block you're out of luck now. This will seriously hamper the ability of IT professionals to do any meaningful research on MS product offerings. My $350 subscription has netted them an extra 10 grand in revenue last year alone. I'm paying for the ability to test drive their products, which is in their best interests, and they think that taking that tool away is no big deal. They are seriously mistaken.

Re:Herding all devs over to Azure

[0123456]

If you don't mind your dev code out in the cloud. What could possibly go wrong?

Look on the plus side. The NSA will be able to let you know whether you have any serious bugs.

Re:Herding all devs over to Azure

[Anonymous Coward]

TechNet was never for devs, if they were using for dev purposes they were in breach of their licenses. MSDN is what devs use. TechNet was purely for evaluation of products and training.

Moron Alert! Moron Alert!

[gestalt_n_pepper]

(Or, What can a clueless Microsoft management fuck up this week?)

Microsoft wants to cut down on piracy of its development tools.

All Java developement tools are free.

SharpDevelop is free.

Any questions?

Re:Moron Alert! Moron Alert!

[thetoastman]

Yep, good Java development tools are free (won't start the NetBeans versus Eclipse flamefest here).

Java application servers are free. Pick one, many are good, and you can buy support if you want it.

For those people stuck with .NET, SharpDevelop is free. I'm learning how to integrate .NET, IIS, and a servlet application. The boilerplate configuration is pretty easy. What I'm working on now is learning enough .NET to create a non-trivial application, and integrate that with the existing servlet application. My only real issue with SharpDevelop is that it doesn't appear to have a packaging option so I can create a zip file and import it into my IIS server. If SharpDevelop provided that, I'd be set.

Does SharpDevelop compete well with Visual Studio Professional and above? It doesn't appear to. However, it's not $500+ to obtain, either.

Re:Moron Alert! Moron Alert!

[goonerw]

Any questions?
Yep. What makes you think your suggestions have anything to do with Technet? Technet has SFA to do with the MS Development stack. It doesn't come with any paid version of Visual Studio for a reason. If you want a development stack, get MSDN.

SharpDevelop is free.
So's Visual Studio Express.

Microsoft doesn't want to be bothered...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

...with the OS or the language platform anymore. Not enough long term profit in it. They want to be a sort of Cloud/HP/Apple. They want to be a smartphone/tablet and internet based business services vendor and that's it. There's apparently just not enough profit in the OS or supporting application developers.

Why don't they just admit it so we can all move on? Linux awaits.

Re:Microsoft doesn't want to be bothered...

[Anonymous Coward]

They haven't wanted .NET developers to do web apps really for years now unless it ties to a business back-end. What support do they give web developers for ASPX? Not much.

Re:Microsoft doesn't want to be bothered...

[JDG1980]

Microsoft doesn't want to be bothered with the OS or the language platform anymore. Not enough long term profit in it. They want to be a sort of Cloud/HP/Apple. They want to be a smartphone/tablet and internet based business services vendor and that's it. There's apparently just not enough profit in the OS or supporting application developers.

It's clear that this is what Ballmer is thinking (he's recently on record as saying that he wants MS to become a "device and services company"), but it really doesn't make any damn sense.

When it comes to cloud services and portable devices, MS is actually pretty late to the game, with nothing particularly special to offer. And their brand name is actually a negative – even people who like MS products often don't like their business practices, and many people only use MS because they more or less have to.

I use Windows at home because it's what I am used to (I've been using it since Win95), and because some of the software I want to run is only available for Windows. My workplace uses Windows, Office, and a variety of other MS technologies in part because it's an industry standard, but also largely because of legacy lock-in: much of the third-party software we use is Windows-only, we have to work with existing Office documents all the time, and all our existing processes and procedures are based around Windows/Office.

The desktop (and associated IT functions related to the desktop) is the one area where Microsoft has a real competitive advantage that will be very hard for anyone else to erode. Yet they seem blithely willing to ignore it, throw it away, in favor of moving to new lines of business where existing competition is fierce and they don't bring anything new to the table. It doesn't make any damn sense, and if the stockholders cared about the long-term viability of the company, they'd pitch Ballmer (and his chair) out the window right now.

Re:Microsoft doesn't want to be bothered...

[MrMickS]

...with the OS or the language platform anymore. Not enough long term profit in it. They want to be a sort of Cloud/HP/Apple. They want to be a smartphone/tablet and internet based business services vendor and that's it. There's apparently just not enough profit in the OS or supporting application developers.

Why don't they just admit it so we can all move on? Linux awaits.

You say this like its a bad thing? Its the way that the market is going, so is where the money is.

On premise installations are dropping. Why spend money on your own infrastructure when someone else can take all of that expensive maintenance and the capital costs off your books? Sure, there are regulatory issues to overcome at present, as well as privacy ones, but it is the future. In the connected world SaaS just makes sense if your business model allows it.

Home PCs, as we know them, are on the way out in favour of connected devices with cloud storage. Yes, not for the inhabitants of Slashdot, but we are the exception not the rule. There are probably more people whose primary computing experience these days is via a iDevice or an Android one than via a traditional PC.

Microsoft have a vision of the future, and its pretty good. They are trying to do what Apple did when the iMac came out and drive the market, remember the outrage at the lack of a floppy disk and only USB ports? Sadly the tech elite, you know, us here on Slashdot, time and again prove ourselves to be the least visionary, blinkered Luddites out there. So we'll scream and holler and protest about what's being taken away rather than looking to the future.

I know I'll get called it, because its the standard defence against unpopular views on here lately, but I'm not a shill. I've never owned a PC that ran Windows and my only experience with MS products away from work has been an XBox 360.

predicted new service

[Anonymous Coward]

online cloud-based virtual lab environment for $999 per user per year that gives access most of the same software, but all running on microsoft's "cloud".

Re:predicted new service

[zlives]

you will use MS Assuer and like it

Go ahead Microsoft and kill yourself faster!

[arfonrg]

They seem to have forgotten: "Developers developers developers... developers developers developers... developers developers developers..."

Good job MS :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Microsoft is finally turning the screws on a large swath of people that used MS software in creative ways.
Professionals will of course pay, the others thrown out on a street. No more playing with free time unlimited MS software.
So now the choice is pay or use other software solutions. But people that for 20+ years have been indoctrinated to use MS software without paying for it (or paying very very little for it) find that detoxification is difficult hence all the cries "either this or I'll pirate it". Guys guys, Microsoft doesn't give a flying fuck if you pirate their software. The important thing is you can't pirate MS in a business setting or in a professional setting.
I love Microsoft, they should have done this ages ago. Oh well it's never to late to redeem itself.

Re:Good job MS :)

[AdmV0rl0n]

You are partly right and partly wrong.

People did tend to stretch the technet subscription. Certainly on for my part it ended up being rigged all the way at home, in VMs with a scratch infrastructure used for work and for fun. Microsoft and pretty much everyone else has twigged that whats happened is a slippage where I think I am not alone. Companies do not give me a test farm. As a tech, I think MS fund this out. My company found this out. I was either going to end up worse at what I do - Or do this.

But, and here is the elephant in the room *But*, I started more than 20 years ago. I started before all the DRM and ever deeper licensing and chasing down every dollar. I started before MS thought is was smart to have 9 versions. I have seen what the loss leader of allowing home use for free actually translated into computers on the office floor as people triggered the wave that meant windows at home - windows at work.

So, that was the tide coming in. I guess the tide always has to shift. So, the home user got targetted as 'pirate' - so between being made the enemy and crapping over them with worse versions and less features, less features, and less features, and them finding the competition (Hi iOS, Android, *nix, OSX) Microsoft have been on the path of eradicating the crack investment first pack free loss leader. You can add in shipping Win8hate - which only tiny minorites even accept, and demand every corner of the ecosystem use (er no..) and then just to cap it off - why not withdraw Technet. Having blown away the loss leader that brought in the kids, Joe Sixpack and the wife, now its time to chew on some tech and admin bones. You can only chew on your roots up to a point, then the plant dies.

Slashdot should actually be happy. MS used to be a company that seemed to wholly understand how to build marketshare, to build the monopoly. iOS and OSX upgrades cost what? £20 or less? Android is free(ish). *Unix has lots of choices. The dev stacks for these exist and are largely in place.

When the OS has rotted, there becomes a growing crisis where the reason for the windows ecosystem rots as well. If you don't run Windows, you don't need sharepoint. You won't need Exchange. You'll be able to change DBs.

Azure? What would anyone need Azure for?

I'm watching the world slowly walk away, and the Board is like Nero fiddling while Rome burns. Oh, I know. They have other cities they are building. But Rome is Rome. And when Rome fell, that was the end.

Developers developers developers

[gatkinso]

Oh well, so much for that theory.

Re:This is mostly an astroturf post

[Anonymous Coward]

I fixed your subject line for you

The Best

[The Cat]

Visual Basic 5.0 Professional was the best product Microsoft ever made.

Farewell, my old friend.

Developers Developers Developers

[Anonymous Coward]

Developers developers developers... ah screw 'em.

How is Ballmer still CEO? This stock will jump the day he retires.

Technet? Azure is what's being pushed

[rsborg]

Now you'll have to put that test client on the cloud and get it through Azure so you can do your testing. I'm sure with Azure you can deploy almost any Windows OS you want.

Just the nudge I needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks Microsoft! This was just the last nail in the coffin that I needed to completely switch platforms to Free Open Source Linux.
Currently playing with Zorin happily and also quite happy using my Chromebook.
Multiply myself a million fold and countries like China and Germany moving to their own favorite Linux flavors.
Suck Eggs!

Technet is NOT the Developer stack

[CharlieG]

MSDN is the developer stack. More stuff, but costs more too

Petition MS to create an affordable alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

I created a petition asking Microsoft to create an affordable alternative. Please sign and re-tweet if you wish to join and fight back: http://chn.ge/15Zw5YC.

I currently have the professional subscription which costs $350 new and $250 renewed. To get the comparable subscription from MSDN costs $6120. This is definitely about amp'ing up revenue IMO. However, since I have to pay for my own subscription, Microsoft won't see an increase in revenue with my help. It is simply unattainable.

I also wonder if this is part of a strategy to pushing IT professionals to Azure. If that's the case, you can forget it.

Technet subscription must check in every 24 hours

[jfdavis668]

Change the subscription policy so that you have to check in every 24 hours to maintain your subscription. You can only access it from a friends house if your home PC is still on. Hey, it worked for the Xbox One, didn't it?

Webspark also down.

[Anonymous Coward]

My Laptop getting the message "non genuine" .
So i tough i call Microsoft about it,they said subscription legal and ask to email it.
I go to Microsoft website ,email form also not working..
After a few week,they website asking to renew or terminate..I click renew using various of browser.nothing happen.
Today , i read it.. Oh more conspiracy going out next..
** dam i don't want to promote microsoft stack anymore.. php + sql server + windows server ..+ reporting via excel and word.

Two-way street: feedback as well as output

[hessian]

I liked the way TechNet felt like a group of people united around the purpose of pushing MSFT's software beyond its stated limits. I think they improved a lot as a result of the feedback they got.

Re:Two-way street: feedback as well as output

[Anonymous Coward]

Just think of all the tech-savvy geeks out there who, thanks to affordable TechNet subscriptions, provided input, suggestions, encouragement, support, and recommendations at work and to family and friends which directly resulted in more purchased licenses. While I freely admit that all TechNet subscribers are not using their subscriptions for strictly "evaluation" purposes, the availability of affordable access to Microsoft's products has ultimately led to far more money spent on Microsoft than I think most people would care to admit to.

You're doing it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Yesterday I created a Google App Engine application for free using free developer tools including a free development environment (Eclipse) and free Google provided extensions to build Google cloud applications. I may, at some point, reconsider my choice of Java for this application, in which case I will probably use Python, which is the beginning of another entirely free tool chain.

I'm sitting here trying to care about recent Microsoft policy changes. I really am.

I've failed. I just don't give a damn about Microsoft, it's products or policies or the plight of it's loyal developers.

Herding all devs over to Silver Linings, INC.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Linux have anything like that?

Re:Herding all devs over to Silver Linings, INC.

[readingaccount]

Nope. No-one in Linux-land is going to invest in the substantial capital to ensure such tools are running similarly to Azure. On the other hand, all the equivalent tools for Linux are free, so there's no barrier in terms of cost for Linux at least.

Piracy

[eWarz]

It's actually all due to the perceived threat of piracy. Rather sad actually. I'm sure it was misused more often then not, but I think it will hurt more than help in the long wrong. My employer wants to can my MSDN subscription due to moving to open source...was going to try to talk them into a technet subscription so we have access to test the latest versions of windows, exchange, office, etc. but now it looks like that won't be an option. Keep in mind that I've had a personal technet account for a while. It went from 10 cd keys to 5 cd keys to 3...i knew it would be gone soon. Still sad though :(

Re:Piracy

[eWarz]

long run* sorry buys, sleep deprivation due to 2 year old ;)

All done now

[Bravoc]

As an MCT, I get the TechNet subscription as part of my annual fees. Probably the most valuable benifit of the MCT program. Since I'm not really doing much with MSFT training these days, having much more fun with Linux and Open Source stuff, I've been debating weather or not to keep my MSFT certifications going. I stopped doing all the Novell certification crap back in the '90s as they became less and less relevant. I'm thinking this is just more MSFT not being able to figure out how to play in today's environment. I guess I'm done with Microsoft now.

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel like MS has just stabbed a bunch of us admins in the back.
I've always supported Microsoft installations. Starting at windows for workgroups

  I'd argue that when It comes to IT solutions, I'm usually the person quite a few different mid size businesses and non-profits in my area take advice from. I've recommended upgrades from Exchange 2003 to 2013 and handled OS upgrades tons of times (I'm still not a fan of windows 8) anyway, most of my product recommendations come from testing and playing around with Microsoft products downloaded from technet. -- Lets be honest here, it's easy to find "non-legit" Microsoft products to do testing with -- however, I liked the idea of having a legit outlet where I could download and test different software packages and then recommend based on my findings..

After reading a lot of comments...

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading a lot of comments that include hand wringing, apologies, disgruntled developers and the like, I have to say to all of you: Are you really surprised, really? Its been a long time since m$ made any kind of splash in the technology world. They know it. We all know it. Developers leave the company parking lot on mass at 4:30 every day. They don't really want to still be there at 4:31. A group of suits have looked at what m$ sells well. Their development has been lack lustre. Bing is bong. Xbox makes money, finally. Windows8.x might eventually be better than 8.0. .net is nyet (I remember hand wringing when they killed that). Encarta is long dead, likewise bob. What m$ finally did is they said "how much money do we make building PC stuff?" And the consultants they asked told them 'Keep making and flogging the re-branded stuff and you will eventually sell a billion dollars worth of it". So they keep flogging the same old stuff. There are enough people at the home office to change the fonts and graphics and make "Windows XP" into "Windows8" or whatever. Same shit, different shovel. They don't need a bunch of tech kiddies running around. They have decided to ride this pig into the ground. Don't be surprised. Expect at least 10 more years of this.

Even better

[dutchwhizzman]

Even better, it used to be free for a lifetime if you had your MCSE. Unfortunately, I passed my exams about three weeks after they quit that practice. Now get off my lawn!

Who cares when your running W2K OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

Try and download that

They just keep hammering nails in their own coffin

[waspleg]

Although I'm surprised to hear this since my subscription expired in May and they have called me almost every day since then and sent multiple mailings and whatnot trying to get me to renew. I let them know in multiple "surveys" their tactics were not appreciated nor their treatment of paying customers and let their 'live' support reps know it too.

I only used it to get multiple activation keys for Windows 7 cheaper than I could find anywhere else which is exactly what they don't want you to do but they treat their customers like shit and keep pulling keys off that you were entitled to. I also used it to set up a Windows 8 pro test machine here at work so I knew to dodge that bullet in advance.

Still, this was supposed to be one of their methods for evangelizing the gospel of Microsoft. I remember in the 90's reading here on /. about how the only way anything would be able to have a chance against them would be because they killed themselves. Seems to be coming true.

Where will I go for individual OS patch downloads?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or is this just the subscription service?

Re:Technet subscription must check in every 24 hou

[Anonymous Coward]

Exaclty - got to a KMS based key solution. Done.

Depending upon what market the GP wants to be in..

[sgtrock]

..I don't know that I would recommend Javascript myself. It's finally cracked the top 10 at Tiobe and it's definitely growing. However, it's still not exactly mainstream. It's also inherently limited to a narrow development niche. The GP could choose to dive into some sort of mix of C, C++, ObjectiveC, Perl, and/or Python instead. S/he would probably have more success out of the gate because all of those languages have a broad applicability to a much larger set of use cases.

However, I think the larger point you're trying to make is a valid one. The rate of change isn't slowing down for anyone. These days nobody in IT can afford to be a one trick pony. In order to stay relevant in the market, developers need to have more than a passing familiarity in several languages and environments. At minimum they should be competent in at least a couple and reviewing one or two others. (What? You thought you were done studying when you got out of college?)

They never learnt piracy and free benefitted them.

[Gel214th]

Microsoft never learnt that the reason that Windows had such a large userbase and got so popular was because of piracy. The only reason it spread throughout the world the way it did, was because people could pirate the OS. That cemented a customer base in some businesses, and in the home.

What the developers and consultants can play around with at home they are more likely to recommend and use in the office environments. The office is not going to purchase additional licenses for their consultants to mess with at home. A consultant is not going to go through the expense of purchasing MS licenses for a home deployment when there are alternatives to the cost and expense. When enough consultants feel that way suddenly customers are not going to be pitched a Microsoft solution anymore.

Oh, and the people that just subscribed to a Technet subscription for software will still get the software, only this time MS might get absolutely nothing from that userbase, not even a Technet subscription.

How did they gauge what the impact of this decision would be? Did they talk to their developers and consultants before ending a decades old program that so many had come to depend on?

Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot, again, by trying to force their user base into spending more money instead of adding value. They need to recognise that there is a lot more competition out there, and people aren't starry eyed about Microsoft anymore.

Their move with the Xbox One to lock out the Rest of the World, their missteps with Windows 8 (and from what I am hearing 8.1 as well) are indicative of a company who's leadership is out of touch with its customer base. They are still riding on the successes of Bill Gates and floundering badly in the new era. What is the last great thing that came out of Microsoft?

And now, they are cutting off the people that promote and support their products in the hope of making some more money (from whom?).

Azure - Non-US companies won't do this!

[glamb]

After Prism, companies outside of USA are very reluctant to house corporate data in US company cloud.

Reasoning - Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although there's alternatives to the many offerings, TechNet has and still continues to be a great resource. What M$ is doing is simple - PC's aren't selling anymore and will be gone in less than 5. Windows 8 is a FAIL in a major way, as is their venture into tablet-land. Smartphones are dominated by
iOS and Android - that's it (Sorry Windows and BB fans).

what's left - cloud/azure - that's biz-oriented only
office - that's why there's office 365 (pay me every time)
bing? - look at the fancy commercials that supposedly tout it's speed over chrome
          really- a poor choice, but there's not much fruit left on the tree

TechNet is one of the last (large) vestiges for sys admins, DBA's and general troubleshooting....
It is a sad day indeed when this tool is no longer avail - at leat without taking out a mortgage.