Students given Microsoft developer tools for free

Microsoft has announced it is to give away copies of its developer tools to students in higher education. As part of its DreamSpark programme, the software giant is offering free editions of the full Professional versions of tools such as Visual Studio. DreamSpark is being launched in ten countries - the UK, USA, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium on Tuesday. The Express editions of Microsoft's Visual Studio development environment are traditionally free, but offer limited functionality.

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The XNA Game Studio 2.0 for XBox 360 game development, the Expression Studio web design suite, Windows Server 2003 Standard and the technically obsolete 2005 version of Visual Studio are also included in the DreamSpark programme. All products can be downloaded from Channel 8. Others are likely to follow.

(jbe)