<p>I've said for a long time that we need to have ways for individuals to use / play with serious commercial software, without having to pay the price that corporations have to pay to use it.</p> <p><a href=http://www.kindel.com/blogs/charlie>Charlie Kindel's blog</a> is a perfect example of this. <a href=http://kindel.com/blogs/charlie/posts/456.aspx>Here</a> he talks about a home server that he bought for $503 - but he's using Windows Server 2003 on it, which as far as I can tell, costs more than this entire server does.</p> <p>Some companies offer free personal-use versions of their software. This is great! I wish more companies would do this - but the danger is that many small companies will take the software and use it without paying for it. A large company can afford to do this, but a smaller company may not be able to.</p> <p>Other companies offer stripped-down home versions of their products. Usually, this is just frustrating, because often the most interesting features are the ones they leave out. Microsoft Works is an example of a home product that's a pretty good compromise - it does what most individuals need without the big $$ of Microsoft Office.</p> <p>Do you have a server at home? Do you have a router? Do you have a wireless LAN? That's as much infrastructure as most small companies have.</p> <p>An <a href=http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/buy/choose/>MSDN subscription</a> is an awesome way for a company to get access to a huge variety of Microsoft technologies for a reasonable amount of money (~$1k/year). But that's way too much for a home user.</p> <p>What I'd love to see is an 'MSDN Personal' for the computer hobbyist.</p>Thu, 01 Sep 2005 19:17:07 GMT