I wouldn’t be where I am today without the TechNet subscription. I signed up for it way back when I first decided to become a contractor and I started this blog. I needed content that I could use in a lab. I needed that content to be up to date and, most importantly, affordable. That was TechNet. It allowed me to install software from scratch, learn how it worked, and dive deeper than a canned lab could ever allow.
As we all know, the TechNet subscription was killed off by Microsoft, seen by many as a stab at the heart of IT pros.
This email came in to me over the past hour or so. It’s sad; we may never see IT pros gain the same access to on-premise software again for test and evaluation purposes.
In the back of my mind, I was hoping the new CEO would reverse the shuttering of Technet. Alas, this is one sore spot where they have failed us.
They always blame closing technet because of people abusing the system for piracy. I think most IT Pros would even be OK with some sort of scaled back version of Technet (keeping in mind they have already dialed it back multiple times)
Sad… my subscription runs out about 90 days.
I agree. I had hoped that the new CEO would keep TechNet or (or as I’ve suggested to every and any Microsoft source I run across) something more aligned to IT Pros in MSDN.
Like Mikael Nystrom said in one of his TechEd presentations, I am not a developer. Nor am I. I don’t need Visual Studio. My job is deployments. I need to know Windows OSes, I need to know System Center. And $700+(US) for an MSDN subscription where over 80% of the content is of no use to me doesn’t help.
MVA and the TechNet labs are wonderful assets. But when I’m faced with doing an OSD migrating to close to 30,000 machines, or designing the SCCM infrastructure to support that, I would hope that I have more behind me than watching some videos online.