Microsoft announces DreamSpark

Today Microsoft announced the DreamSpark program. For students from United States, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium there is now a program to get Microsoft products without charge. In the second wave more countries are served.

The current list of products is:

• Visual Studio 2008 Professional
  
• Visual Studio 2005 Professional
• XNA Game Studio 2.0
• 12-month free membership in the XNA Creators Club
• Expression Studio (Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Design, Expression Media)
• Windows Server Standard Edition (2005, 2008 from next semester on)
  
• SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
• [Update] Virtual PC 2007 [/Update]
  

For everyone who looks puzzled like me; here Bill Gates is talking about free software, students and technologies.

The DreamSpark Program is hosted here and the initial blog entry is from Veni, Vidi, Velcro.

Finally, I was headed towards this great announcement by heise news.