Techiebytes

When the weather gets bad I like to hibernate in my "bat cave" and self-train on newer technology products. I have to give the boys in Redmond credit – they’ve made it easy to learn new technology tricks. The number of free resources to learn and explore MS technology solutions is amazing!

Visual Studio Express Editions offer aspiring developers access to compartmentalized versions of MS Visual Studio. Products include Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++. Visual Web Developer, and SQL Server Express. If you need training to get you started don’t fret, they have samples and resources on the site or you can pop over to http://msdn.microsoft.com/ to access additional training materials.

Virtual Labs are a great way to get hands on experience with new products without the headache of downloads or installations. These web based labs give you access to instances of MS software running on remote servers so you can self-train at your own pace for free.

Another solution is to download Virtual Hard Disks of products you’re interested in. These disks can be run utilizing free MS virtualization software without any additional installation or configuration steps.

These are just a few of the free resources available from Microsoft. With the economy down, knowledge is key and Microsoft is making it affordable to invest in yourself.

Other links to consider:

• http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/default.aspx
• http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp
• http://www.ubuntu.com/

Filed under: Technology Tagged: | Chris Jenkins, Education, Microsoft, Windows