ITidiots open forum > Electronics for under £300
Why not get yourself a Technet Plus subscription. You then get all the MS products you want, just download the ISOs from the site and you get legal keys. Want Windows 7 Ultimate, just download it, and you get 10 keys. Vista, XP, Exchange it's all there. You also get all the latest betas not open to the public.
See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/subscriptions/renew.aspx.
BTW you can get 10% off by using the discount code below.
Offer valid December 21-December 31, 2009 on full-priced items with discount code 10%OFFTECHNETTHX.
Quote from the site:-
"TechNet Plus helps IT Professionals prepare for critical issues and plan for future deployments by providing them with fast and convenient access to the latest software for evaluation without time or feature limits, beta releases, 2 complimentary Professional Support incidents and other technical information and tools to get their jobs done faster."
Vaughan White
Technet Plus
That's what i was going to suggest, i have been a subscriber for several years now cant do with out it.
"evaluation without time or feature limits"
you have to keep being a valid subscriber to continue using, but that's obvious .
Only problem you may have is that you have to download the ISO's, i know you have troubles with access in saudi
or something to do with your flying ??
Supernova
Probably lots of little things, I will probably buy some scenery for FSX, Windows 7 Home Premium (32bit/64bit, not sure yet, 32bit vista worked well...)
As for Technet, I won't get it as at the moment, I feel that I won't benefit from it. It takes on average 14-20 hours to download Windows 7 Enterprise (and if I pause it, it corrupts) so I downloaded it in 50 minutes in the UK. Also, I am focusing on flight sim at the moment as I feel it is more interesting. I will probably join a "Virtual Airline" based in the UK to get some "virtual" real world experience.
Or, alternatively, I will do a clean factory reset of Vista, install SP2 and all the latest updates and build up from there as Vista did run great when I first got the laptop, but after I put Visual Studio Basic 2008 Express and some other junk I didn't need, it really slowed down. Plus I know that I will have working drivers with Vista...
That way, I will wait a year or two and buy a new laptop/desktop with Windows 7 (or the next OS) by that time it would have established itself and I know it would definitely have full support.
Then if I see something I like, I can buy it (i.e new phone...)
Jamie
Ok, I want something new, I have £300 cash and I want some sort of gadget. A new phone perhaps, but not any new laptop, netbook or other stuff.
Windows 7... possibly, but I am just going to re-install Vista for now to tie me over with my .NET problems...