DreamSpark: Microsoft offers registered students free developer software

Microsoft has made a seemingly smart move by giving away bundles of developer software for free to registered students in 11 countries.

The DreamSpark programme goes live today in the UK, Belgium, China, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada and the United States, and offers software including Visual Studio, Expression Studio, Windows Server, and XNA Game Studio 2.0.

To qualify for the deal, you have to be at an accredited college or university. In the UK — apparently this means getting hold of an ISIC card. The Inside Microsoft blog reports that the registration and download process is fairly pain-free, and the downloads fast.

The programme sees Microsoft’s continued commitment to making their software affordable for students, presumably in the hope that they’ll be lifelong fans of everything Microsoft.

(Via Inside Microsoft blog)

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