What is the difference between Technet and MSDN? I want to buy a subscription but I am confused which one to choose. I want to be able to download Windows and Office.
Get Technet Standard which is the cheapest one and gets you windows 7 all versions except enterprise, and office 2010 pro plus and standard. Plus, lots of other softwares with enough keys to last you for many years. Keep in mind that your subscription/ability to download/retrieve keys is valid for 1 year. However, the keys/licence generated during the subscription period is in perpetuity.
Thanks for your reply. What do you mean by perpetuity? Suppose if I downloaded Windows 7 Ultimate and generate a key for it. If I activated that Windows 7 with that key will it work only for 1 year or forever? And is there a limit of how many keys I can generate for each product?
Perpetuity means the keys will work and activate even after you are no longer a subscriber. Suppose your subscription expires on day 365. You can download all iso/exe and generate all keys applicable from day 1-365. But your keys will not stop working from day 366. Only your ability to download/generate keys will end on day 365 unless you renew. As to number of activations per key, no one knows. From my experience, each office 2010 pro plus key should be good for 25-50 activations on internet, plus more by telephone. Technet Std gives 2 keys per product, so office 2010 pro plus is say 100 activations, and office std for the same. Similar number should be applicable for ultimate, professional, home premium. Bottomline is that you should not run out of activations at least before windows 10 unless you are in the habit of installing everything everyday.
Thanks. So my products will remain activated forever! I called TechNet Support yesterday, they said: For TechNet Standard I get 2 keys per product and each key can be used only 10 times. That means only 20 activations per product. And for TechNet Professional 2 keys and each key can be used 20 times. So 40 activations per product. But my other problem is that I won't be able to download Windows 8 Developer Preview from TechNet as it is only available from MSDN now. But I think Windows 8 Beta will be available to both TechNet and MSDN subscribers.
Perpetuity is not the case. I have been a TechNet subscriber for many years. One year I decided to skip subscribing for the year. All of my keys no longer worked on new installs and the machines that had previously installed got marked Not Genuine when you used Windows Update. The year I skipped was 2009. Maybe something has changed since then but I don't think so.
My subscription expired on 10 Aug 2011, and the keys are still working. In fact, new installs of all MS software work. Keys do `usually' work in perpetuity unless MS thinks you are selling those. It is meant for one computer in the strict sense, though I have installed on three.
I have a Technet Pro sub but I use the Daz and Office toolkit on the machines that I play with. This allows me to install at will for test systems without using my keys. My sub gave me 5 keys for each product with 10 activations so looks like MS is changing to 2 keys with 20 activations for Pro based on your phone conversation with them.
10 activations?? I have used one office 2010 key for close to 50 activations, and similar no for ultimate. This is automatic, online with no telephone activation. Maybe when they reduced the number of keys for pro/std from 10/5 to 5/2, they also increased the no of activations.
I am serious! It didn't happen right away so acyuta just because yours expired 10 Aug 2011 it will happen. I didn't share any of my keys and they still got rejected. If they were never intended to expire then why do they call it a subscription? The software subscription is intended to be used for testing purposes only.
Maybe when they reduced the number of keys they also reset the keys for people who didn't continue their subscriptions. That could be why mine no longer worked.
No, I didn't contact them as I felt it was because I discontinued my subscription. I had a Pro subscription and had acquired all 10 of my keys for all products and printed them to a pdf for future use. I tried several of the keys on several of the products and none of them worked. I could understand one not working but not all of them. I still have the pdf. I will give them a try again but I doubt that they will work. I'll append with my results.