Microsoft Student Partners

How would you like to entirely set up your computer as a development machine with legitimate Microsoft software for FREE?
This is what the MSDNAA is offering you!

What is the MSDNAA? According to Microsoft’s site for it: “MSDN AA is the easiest and most inexpensive way for students and faculty in the technology and design fields to get the latest Microsoft software they need”. In a most basic level, Microsoft provides free software (excluding Office) to all Science\Engineering students such that they can use, test and evaluate it.

So, to get the most of the MSDNAA, you should set up a development environment on your laptop or home PC. How do you do this? Simple: Firstly, get yourself Windows Vista and Visual Studio 2005 (or 2008 if you can find it), then goto the Its Not Cheating site (Watch this space for the link) and get yourself Office Ultimate 2007 for $75. Now you have a basic set up that you can start to do development and assignments on. If you want to get serious grab Virtual PC 2007, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005 – with these 4 tools you have 3 perfect test environments (Vista, XP and Server 2003) that will allow you to do some serious development and testing.

Before you go off and set up your machine, there are also a couple of things that you need to know. Firstly, if you take out an Operating System, you also need to get another piece of software (you’ll note that my recommendations take this into account). Secondly, the MSDNAA Licence FAQ specifies: “Usage of MSDN AA software is always limited to non-commercial academic use”

MSDNAA Info Per University
If your University isn’t here – please contact us

• Curtin University – Go to 314.238 and find a ComSSA Committee member
• UWA – Follow the link to the CSSE info page on Downloads. You will need to complete an application form, and then you can borrow the CDs or download the software online.
  http://web.csse.uwa.edu.au/school_and_systems_information/school_systems_information/downloads

- Daniel
Curtin MSP

Nick from Microsoft has posted on his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/msozacademic about the recent MSP Bootcamp in Sydney.

WA MSP now has a forum which can be found at http://forum.wamsp.com.au.

Luke
MSP (UWA)

This is the first year WA has had Microsoft Student Partners, and don’t we have a lot planned!!

Already, at Curtin, we have decided we shall be running a version of XNA Game Camp and Creating Unit Testing in Visual Studio 2008.

For those of you who don’t know, XNA is the gaming platform that has been developed by Microsoft. With XNA you can develop and deploy games for both PC and XBox 360 and soon to be Zune! If you ever wanted to start learning how to develop games, then here will be your chance! Your local MSP will have more information about when the event will be run at your university.

Unit Testing has been integrated into Visual Studio 2008. Now you can create unit tests for sections of code, create test groups, run tests and view the results. We will be showing you how you can maximize the use of this within the VS 2K8 package and hopefully make your life a little easier when your lecturer asks “Where’s your tests and results for your modules?”

Allan
MSP (Curtin)

Once again the Imagine Cup is back for another year, and we need your help!!

Microsoft HQ Australia, is making a bid to host the 2009 Imagine Cup Finals! “Hmmm…. That’s great, but how can I help??” Quite simply register for the Imagine Cup! There is no obligation to submit any items into the competition but getting people registered into the program is a key issue to show that not only is Australia great, but we are also supporting the competition in a bid for the finals!

However, if you do submit an entry, here is something that may be quite useful to know. Microsoft is providing access to free downloads for EVERY student who is part of a submission!

So if you are interested go to the Imagine Cup Website (http://imaginecup.com/Default.aspx) and sign-up today!!

Allan

MSP (Curtin)

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Feb. 18, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates today will unveil a software giveaway that will ultimately provide millions of college and high school students around the world with access to the latest Microsoft developer and designer tools at no charge to unlock their creative potential and set them on the path to academic and career success.

The Microsoft DreamSpark student program (http://channel8.msdn.com) makes available, at no charge, a broad range of development and design software for download. The program is now available to more than 35 million college students in Belgium, China, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S. Broad global coverage, as well as an expansion of the program to high school students around the world, potentially reaching up to 1 billion students worldwide, will continue throughout the next year. Gates will share details with students and faculty at Stanford University as part of a U.S. and Canada college tour that kicks off today.

“We want to do everything we can to equip a new generation of technology leaders with the knowledge and tools they need to harness the magic of software to improve lives, solve problems and catalyze economic growth,” Gates said. “Microsoft DreamSpark provides professional-level tools that we hope will inspire students to explore the power of software and encourage them to forge the next wave of software-driven breakthroughs.”

Click here for the entire article.

Unfortunately Australian students won’t have access until around the middle of this year, your local MSP will be able to tell you more closer to the release date. Until then, there have been reports that students with an International Student ID can register and start benefiting from the free software right away.

Once again Microsoft is running the “It’s Not Cheating” campaign this year.

Microsoft Student Partners have available to them copious numbers of the trial discs, which can be used and activated for a full copy of Office 2007 ULTIMATE!!! Alternatively the download is available online.

For the price of $75 (Australian), you can own a copy of Office 2007 Ultimate FOR LIFE!!

In the coming few days we will have a link posted that will take you straight through to activation page to purchase your very own copy.

For a further fee $14.95 (To be confirmed) Microsoft will also send out a backup disc, if you have downloaded it from the Internet.

If you would like more information, contact your local MSP today.

Allan
MSP (Curtin)

Many of you have probably seen the recent articles about vLite on sites such as Neowin and Engadget, and you may have also seen the even more recent press releases from Microsoft saying not to use vLite; I’m here to tell you my story on it, and (possibly) help answer the question of “Should I customise my Windows Installation?”

First off, some info:

• Product: vLite
• Address: http://www.vlite.net/
• Description: “vLite is the Windows Vista component removal and pre-install configuration tool.” (from the vLite website)

To me, this sounded brilliant – I have a laptop with an 80Gb harddrive, and Vista takes up 7Gb of that, so anything to get a few extra Gig of space was worth it for me. First off, vLite requires the install files for Vista (and can not use an already installed copy). Unfortunately I didn’t have my Vista CD’s with me at the time, so I had to look for a (legal) way to get around this limitation. Luckily I came across a thread in the Notebook hardware forums that described how to download a Vista ISO legally. Having obtained said files, I opened vLite and began chopping. The first thing I notices is how little each component actually took – except for 3 big ones: Printer Drivers, Asian Language Support and Speech Support, each of which accounted for about 1Gb of the installed Vista’s space. The Asian Language and Speech Support I could understand being 1Gb a piece, but Printer Drivers?

Turns out that Printer drivers were one of the Core Technologies that was changed in Vista, so most of the Printer drivers needed to be rewritten – additionally, printers are “expected to work out of the box” with Windows (seeing as Windows has had decent Printer support since 3.1 (the legendary 11th disc – Printer Drivers!)). Amazingly, of the 15 or so manufacturers whom Microsoft deemed important enough to include drivers for, one manufacturer accounted for a third of this bulk – Canon.

Seeing this “bloat” and many other instances of applications and drivers I’ll never use (Windows Mail, Premium Inbox Games, etc), I chopped all of it away and (with only a 800Mb installed (down form 2.3Gb)) “upgraded” my version of Vista to the new, and improved, version. Except it wasn’t.

First thing that I noticed was that my System Bell was beeping all of the time – somehow Vista’s audio sub-system malfunctioned and it was unable to find my sound card, let alone use it. Additionally a number of devices broke (due to lack of drivers), some I didn’t care about (eg the on-board modem and fireware) and others I did (eg my sound card and SD card reader). Seeing the mess I made, I decided to make a new version with more stuff left in.

Failure still – My sound card was still not being found, though most other issues were fixed. I decided to try to install the SP1 RC (to see if the files\drivers in there would fix my system). This is where I experienced Microsoft’s warning about vLite first hand. The upgrade failed miserably, I had a look at the event viewer and noticed a few hundred errors in reference to the SP installer. It was at this point – sound system stuffed, explorer randomly crashing and no hope to upgrade – that I decided to reinstall the original Vista.

My final piece of advice is this:
If you want to cut down the memory usage of Vista, kill some unnecessary applications and services (such as the Sidebar, and (possibly) indexing)
If you need more hard drive space, get a bigger hard drive

- Daniel
Curtin MSP