VBGamer

Whoot! it's legit! My VB.NET 2003 standard edition shal arrive in 4-6 weeks! Sweet!

Silly M$... How many people do I have to see saying that they will earn a free VB.NET 2003! Wiy doesn't it is for the whole world?

Too high of a shipping cost?

Ok...Ok... before I do this (consider me spam shy from my overabundance of junk mail I get daily) what is the catch? I know there is one... and I do live in the u.s.... but is there a shipping charge or something of that nature... I just need more info... before I sit and do all that, time is not on my side as it is.... for I have barely any with 1 job and full time college... So please could somebody tell me if this is some kind of scam or not.. this is m$ we are talking about... DaBooda Out....

MS does do some pretty tricky things, but full-out lying about sending a product doesn't seem their style. I believe they really do send you a true, legit version of .NET. I bet you the reason they are doing this though is since they want .NET to circulate faster and become a more popular language. AOL gave away countless CDs, and they're one of the (or at least used to be) top internet providers even though most everyone hates them.

And remember...Bill Gates allone has up in the tens of BILLions. So MS can afford this kind of thing without the slightest hurt to their company.

A few years ago they did something similar for FrontPage. I answered a few questions and they shipped me a full version of FrontPage 1.1, no cost (not even shipping). No strings. I've entered my code for VB.NET 2003, and noticed no shipping charge...I'm expecting the same deal (and I like it).

Basically, they want lots of people to use Visual Basic, and say that it is great, and then they go and tell their boss that using VB.NET is going to triple their productivity, then the boss looks at the difference in price between VB.NET and Visual Studio.NET and decides that they might as well buy Visual Studio.NET... something like that. Basically, it is advertising, nothing new, just a method of advertising, which has fairly long term significance rather than short term, so at least right now, we end up winning.

I got my copy just fine. They do ask you some semi-personal questions, but they as far as I could tell they weren't any different than the question M$ always makes you answer to register. Most of the questions assumed you worked for a company, which I don't, so I really didn't tell them anything in the end anyway.