If you attended one of the many Visual Studio 2008 InstallFests we held across the country during December and January, you may be experiencing the “this trial copy is about to expire” message. By now, you should have received your *free*, fully-licensed copy of Visual Studio in the mail. You DO NOT have to uninstall your trial copy and re-install the licensed copy. To apply the key and unlock VS2008, go to the Control Panel and select add/remove programs (or Programs | Program and Features in Vista). Click on the listing for Visual Studio 2008 and choose to Modify/Change the program. This will launch the initial setup screen for Visual Studio where you should be able to enter your license key.

Haven’t received your license key? Did you register your trial copy that you received at the InstallFest? On the back of the disc sleeve that you received at the InstallFest, there was a registration code and website that you needed to visit to register the code and sign up to receive your free copy of Visual Studio. The deadline to claim that registration code is February 25th. If you didn’t claim your registration code and you no longer have the code available, well then… I’m sorry to say, you may be out of luck. In that case, be sure to visit an upcoming Visual Studio launch event near you for a chance at getting a copy of Visual Studio.

Today, Microsoft announced DreamSpark. A program through Channel8 that will offer our developer and designer tools at no charge to college students. This initial release is targeted at 10 countries worldwide including China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, the UK and the US. After a few details are ironed out, future phases will be released to a wider global spread. There are also plans to open this up to High School students in the near future.

The products available include the following:

Channel8 talks to BillG about DreamSpark

The software is available to all college-level students regardless of discipline, major or class. There are some caveats though. This software is provided free of charge as long as the software isn’t being used for commercial purposes. You can build the next Facebook in your college dorm, but once you go commercial with it you need to purchase an appropriate usage license.

There will be challenges in the beginning. As it turns out, there’s no easy way to verify a student’s status. Although 90% of the people who take advantage of this program will have a problem free experience, there may be some edge case that prove to be a little more difficult. We’ll get these ironed out as the program rolls out. You can read the FAQ for more information:

• Student FAQ: http://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/FAQ/Students.aspx
• Administrators FAQ: http://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/FAQ/UniversityAdministrators.aspx

The plans is simple here – to provide student’s with the tools to help them succeed in the technology and design fields. This falls directly into our plans to help grow the software economy and I applaud this move. Channel8 has a video interview with BillG discussing DreamSpark and the opportunities it presents.

I survived last week’s melee that is TechReady. TechReady is a bi-annual conference held for all of the Microsoft technical field people to hear the latest from the Microsoft product teams and to discuss product and technology directions and roadmap. I, unfortunately, didn’t get to enjoy many of the sessions as I was working this year’s conference as a speaker. Most of my time was spent prepping for my session and working through the demos of our upcoming launch tour.

I came back from Seattle learning that the Chicago .NET Users Group meeting was in need of a speaker for their meeting this Wednesday, and I was more then willing to step up and help. After all, it’s been a while since I was a guest speaker for the CNUG group. I have a few ideas in mind of what to talk about on Wednesday, but what I wanted to do is ask everyone else what *they* would like to talk about. How about it, CNUG’ers? What’s on your mind? What are you interested in these days? What do you want to talk about?

Leave a comment here with your topic suggestion. I’ll gauge the interest level and see if I can whip a demo or two around what *you* want to talk about.

Now that you’ve garnered your copy of Visual Studio 2008 from the many installfests we’ve run across the country, it’s time to put it through it’s paces and learn about all of the great new features found in both Visual Studio and .NET 3.5.

As a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft, you’d think we would learn about all of our tools and technologies through a constant IV drip controlled by the product teams in Redmond. Sadly, that’s not the case. We have to drill into the same material that you have access to. One of those items that has helped provide me with a structured learning path is the Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit. This training kit was created out of a 5-day lab that was held for early-adopter customers and partners back in the fall. It contains 20 hands-on labs, 28 presentations and 20 *scripted* demos! It has a wealth of information including topics on LINQ, C# 3.0, VB9, WCF, WF, WPF, Windows CardSpace, Silverlight, ASP.NET AJAX, .NET Compact Framework 3.5, VSTO 3.0, Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server (phew!).

If that’s not enough, you can also check out the Visual Studio 2008 Learning Portal where they have a free e-book on LINQ, ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight that you can read at your leisure. If you’re a web developer and like the more semi-formal training approach, there is also a free e-learning course on ‘Developing Enhanced Web Experiences with Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX Extensions’.

If you don’t have your hands on a copy of Visual Studio 2008 just yet – well, come to one of the many launch events coming up and you just might walk home with one – but you can get your hands on some training with the Visual Studio 2008 Virtual Labs. The folks over at MSDN Virtual Labs have taken a few of the Training Kit labs and turned them into virtual labs. A virtual lab allows you to kick the tires of Visual Studio without installing the bits on your machine. These labs include:

• What’s new in C# 3.0?
• What’s new in Visual Basic 9?
• Building Web Applications with Visual Studio 2008
• Mapping Your Objects to Database Tables with LINQ to SQL
• Client Application Services
• Workflow Enabled Services and Other New Features in the .NET Framework 3.5

All of this should keep you busy for a while. It’s certainly keeping me busy. Sometimes I wish there was an IV drip that would me absorb all of this faster.

Today the Windows Server Product Team pushed out the final bits for Windows Server 2008. There are many new features in Windows Server 2008 (Server Core, Powershell, TS Gateway, Hyper-V, etc.), but the feature I’m looking forward to the most (as is most of my customers) is IIS7.

IIS7 has been under development for the past 4-years and has been completely re-engineered to support the taxing needs of today’s web hosting environment. I can go into great detail about what’s new in IIS7, but I’ll instead invite you to view the webcast, IIS7: End-to-End Overview of the New Web Application Server from Microsoft, for all the details. 

Today also marks the RTM for Vista SP1. The Windows product team has been working diligently since Vista went Gold over a year ago. Many customers have had great experiences with Vista, but many customers have also experienced some pains. SP1 will address many of the issues identified. The team has also focused on improving reliability and performance of Windows Vista.

There will be phased roll out of SP1 with MSDN & TechNet subscribers, along with OEM’s, having access to SP1 today, Volume Licensing customers will receive SP1 on March 1st, and SP1 finding it’s way to Windows Update and Microsoft Downloads on March 18th.

Update: Ok…so I criss-crossed my memos between the Windows Server 2008 availability and the availability of Vista SP1. Windows Server 2008 is available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers today with volume licensing coming online at the beginning of March and retail availability landing in mid-March. Vista SP1 will be available on Microsoft Downloads, Windows Update and MSDN and TechNet downloads in mid-March.

This is a good time to throw in another plug for the upcoming launch events for Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008. Steve Ballmer kicks off the festivities in Los Angeles on February 27th. After that, we’ll see a wave of launch events taking place throughout the world. I, personally, will be presenting at the upcoming launch events taking place in Chicago (March 11), Indianapolis (April 3), Madison (April 17) and Milwaukee (May 9). If you’re not able to make it to a launch event in person, you can try catching the Virtual Launch Event. I’m not quite sure what the Virtual Launch Event is going to entail but it sure sounds interesting.