MSDNAA is up to date at Monash
At the start of the year, I was aware of Visual Studio Express, but I found it a bit limiting to the VS2005 trial I'd used.
When my OpenGL/C++ unit began for Monash, they supported Visual Studio, but not Express. As it turned out, it was a little hard to get GLUT working with VSE, or something.
I did the logical thing, and asked my uni's techdepartment if they could get me Visual Studio through MSDNAA - which they are a part of.
I got this response back at the start of this month (been slack posting this)
Your request has been closed with the following entry:
Hi Paul,
We're sorry for the delay of this request. Please log the call from the online service desk (http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/itsupport/onlineform/ ) if you still need the Visual Studio.Net and we can arrange the media to be sent out to your home as a loan.
Thank you
Regards,
FIT Technical Services
I waited six or seven months….for that? Visual Studio.NET? Wow Monash, either Microsoft are jerking you around with MSDNAA, or you're being the asses you've consistently been.
Lets not forget to mention the unit I needed it for is well and truly over now.
Five year old software, when two other versions have been released, and the third is in public beta. I'm glad I ended up using a trial of VS2005 before migrating to Orcas for it.
I wonder what msozacademic would make of all this.
Hi Paul
msozacademic thinks this: (yeh, I can't believe I just spoke about myself in the third person either)
An MSDNAA subscription is sold by us (Microsoft), but administered by each of the universities that pay for it. What this means is that the university itself is responsible for how it is distributed and who gets access to what. Under the EULA agreement, universities can legally distribute copies of Visual Studio 2005, Visio, Sql Server and every other product in the MSDNAA subscription to ALL students enrolled in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematcis courses. Basically, under the agreement, as long as you are enrolled in the uni's CS department, you are entitled to have access to the latest software (including VS05), so you theoretically SHOULD be able to get access to VS05 quite easily (Orcas won't be included until it goes to commercial release early next year)
I would recommend chasing FIT Tech Services up again if you still want VS05. Again, you are entitled to it under your school's MSDNAA agreement. If you don't get any satisfaction, please drop me a line via the email link at http://blogs.msdn.com/msozacademic, and I'll see what I can sort out from this end. It seems a shame that the uni is paying for a subscription but students aren't being able to make the most of it.
BTW, we will also be rolling out MS hosted MSDNAA servers late this year. THis means that eligible students can then download all the software they need onto their personal computers direct from an MS server rather than from a uni-hosted server or using physical media. This should hopefully clear up problems like this. In defense of most uni systems admins, they are overworked and under-budgeted (a sign of poor education funding in Oz) and do the best they can with the limited resources they have. MS hosted MSDNAA servers will hopefully take some of the pressure off them.
It was fine until you ruined it all by breaking the fourth wall! ;)
I would contact Monash more about it, but seriously, with that sort of response time I'll have VS05 by the time I graduate (which is still a year or two away).
For now, I'll wait till the MSDNAA servers are up later this year (I did notice your post on that recently ;)), or alternatively, just purchase a VS2008 Academic licensed copy myself.
Why? Monash are a pain to deal with. It just takes too long to get any useful information out of them, and I have other things to do in my day :(