Huzzah! :D

Back in early January, the Microsoft UK Developer Launch Event of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 occurred. This was a few weeks ahead of the "public" launch.

I had been pondering for some time leading up to the launch about what to do regarding purchasing these products. There are some very nifty-looking new features in both - Office especially interests me. Basically, Microsoft has been adding features in to Word for years and years, but they've stuck with the same menus & toolbars for probably about 15 years now, too.
When they put out surveys to find out what features people want in Microsoft Office 2007, you know what they found out? The most asked-for features were already in there, but people didn't know it!

So, Microsoft have concentrated this release of Office not on adding features or improving existing ones, so much as actually making all of the existing features easier to find and use.

I thought this looked pretty interesting, and wondered at the best way to (legally ;) ) obtain the software. I was once an "MSDN" subscriber, which is where Microsoft send you all their new software for a year... But that costs around £1800, and I didn't really want to spend that much money on it.

Something caught my eye in the e-mails about the UK Developer Launch Event though... An online competition would be held to win free copies of Windows and Office. Hello! ;)

So, come the day, the competition was to answer some questions, and the first 1000 people would win copies of Windows and Office (there were two competitions, and you could enter either or both).

The questions weren't technical about the products, and instead were questions about the "Keynote Speeches" on the day of the launch. The meant watching the online webcasts of however many hours of speeches there were in order to find out the answers.

Or, a sneaky person might just download the PowerPoint presentations and get the answers from those instead. [He says, attempting to look innocent]

Well, somehow, I did manage to watch all those hours of webcasts and get my answers in within about 20minutes of the competition opening. (Ok, ok, I admit it, I looked at the PowerPoint presentations ;) )
I'm not sure how many other people did that, given it was a "first 1000 correct entries win", and the competition ran for 30 days. I wonder what the numbers are :)

Dear Monkfish

Congratulations!

We're very pleased to tell you that you were one of the first 1000 people to qualify for a free copy of Windows Vista Ultimate by taking part in our UK Developer Launch event online.

Dear Monkfish

Congratulations!

We're very pleased to tell you that you were one of the first 1000 people to qualify for a free copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Professional by taking part in our UK Developer Launch event online.

Huzzah! :)

According to Dabs.com, that's £693.98 worth of software :D

Which was nice. ;)