Microsoft's Free Tools Actually Useful, Who'd Have Guessed?

Slowhand

It looks like the precedent set by Redhat with Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, (where one is the freely-available, community edition, and the other is a fully-supported enterprise product,) Microsoft is following closely. We all know about Visual Studio Express, where you can obtain free IDE's for Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual C#, Visual Web Developer, and SQL Server Express. Basically, functional development tools for the hobbyists or students, giving them a chance to try out Visual Studio and SQL Server 2005 before purchasing the full versions with all the bells and whistles. This has brought many of my friends and cohorts over to Microsoft's camp when it comes to development, because these free versions are easy to use and functional enough to create some very powerful applications. No trial-periods, no activation, and the features you need for most programming projects are included; most people have been extremely happy with this new trend by Microsoft.

On that note, I wanted to share something new with all of you, that came down the pipeline from a good friend of mine. Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 is an accounting tool, not unlike Quickbooks. The idea is, you can download and try out the free version, much like you could with Visual Studio Express, and use it for as long as you'd like. If you want more, purchase the Professional edition. If you're happy, continue using the Express edition. And, quite frankly, this software looks to be pretty functional for what it does, in comparison to the extra content available in the professional edition.

Microsoft has set a pretty good standard on their free tools, and I certainly hope it continues. Just imagine what would happen if they ever decided to release a "Microsoft Office Express", and maybe even "Windows Vista Express", in the same caliber as Visual Studio Express and SQL Server Express has been.

Slowhand

Alright, so I was wrong. . . you do have to activate the damn thing. But it's still free!

Webmaster

Sounds like something worth trying but I'm not sure I want to because I need it or because you marketed it so well by associating it with the great VS express products.

Activation.... I usually register such products anyway so I normally mind, if it weren't for the fact I had to waste hours twice on reactivating XP, by phone, without changing anything. And despite my pda phone with touchscreen, typing all those numbers is no fun.

Some quotes for our non-US visitors:

Microsoft wrote:

At this time, Office Accounting is designed for US small businesses only, and does not support local requirements of countries outside the US.

Microsoft wrote:

Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 is currently available within the USA only. At this stage, no plans exist for international availability of the product, with the exception of the UK. In May 2006, Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 (UK version) entered Beta testing in the UK with a targeted set of customers and partners. Once Beta testing is completed and the results have been fully reviewed, further updates will become available on the UK product launch. We anticipate having these updates in the first half of calendar year 2007.

That doesn't have to mean the product is entirely useless, it 'does' have Multi-currency support, so it may still be worth a look.

Plantwiz

doesn't work with OSX

(well, I figured as much) :P