YWAM Information Technology

Microsoft has announced the following:

We are announcing a pricing promotion for Visual Studio Express – for the first year after the products launch on November 7th, 2005, customers will be able to visit MSDN to download their copy of Visual Studio Express for free!**

Our customers are very excited about the release of these products, so this limited-time download is our gift to the hobbyist, student, and novice community – we’re excited to see the amazing applications they’ll build!

Note that SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is also a free download. The free pricing for SQL Server Express is not limited to the same one-year promotional period as Visual Studio Express.

They go on to say that the following products are included within the promotion:

Visual Basic 2005 Express
Visual C++ 2005 Express
Visual C# 2005 Express
Visual J# 2005 Express
Visual Web Developer 2005 Express

And finally have this to say about the 'free' part with the ** above:

** You said “free for one year” — what does that mean, exactly? Will you be charging for this later?

We originally announced pricing of Visual Studio Express at US$49. We are now offering Visual Studio Express for free, as a limited-in-time promotional offer, until November 6, 2006. Note that we are also offering SQL Server 2005 Express Edition as a free download, and that this offer is not limited to the same promotional pricing period as Visual Studio Express.

Click here to go to Microsoft or here to view the small print on the pricing.

Chin chin

Mark