Just a heads up for any students out there. Microsoft wants all future developers to be hooked on their development software so they have decided to give it away, for free, to todays students, in a program called Dreamspark. At the moment the program is available in the following countries:

• the United States
• the United Kingdom
• Canada
• China
• Germany
• France
• Finland
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Belgium.

The software offered for free is:

• Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
• Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
• Expression Studio (includes Web, Blend, Media and Design)
• SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
• Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition, with SP2

I am downloading Visual Studio 2008 as I am writing this.

That maybe the case but when you download the Visual Studio 2008 iso its 928Mb how do you burn this to a CD. I read the instuctions from M$ and they suggest using Nero but Nero won't burn because it suggests inserting a larger CD. How much larger than 800Mb can you get?

You have to get a running start...

You're supposed to mount it or burn it to a DVD. And it is 3.3GB.

Even with a running start you will fall off the other end!!!

Java has always been free - has been for some time now very widely used for both Web and stand-alone programming, is multi-platform and doesn't have the smell of MS lingering around it. There are also plenty of free Java resources on the Net including various IDEs and specialised Editors.


Alan

Mount it with dameon tools and install it.

When you spell it right Daemon Tools is for WinNT I'm using Win98SE.

Link for Daemon Tools

There is also an archive of older versions here. You can probably figure out which one you need.

Of course though,Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition won't run on Win98SE.

3 words:
cross platform languages
That is all.

I could give you three words too, but like yours, they probably wouldn't be relevant to the topic either. Unless I am being stupid, as usual.