What to do with a new MSDN subscription?

I've been programming in .NET professionally for three years and am always looking to sharpen my tools. I'm a sole developer for a company that recently purchased a MSDN subscription along with Visual Studio 2008 Professional. In what ways can t开发者_Go百科he subscription be useful?

I'm used to googling 80% of the day to figure out how to do what I want to do, and I've learned a ton that way. I'm having trouble seeing what the subscription gains me.

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An MSDN subscription provides much more than simply an offline version of their documentation. You get access to nearly all relevant software that Microsoft makes including Windows, SQL Server, Office, etc. It also includes previous versions, as well as versions that are not yet released to the public.

It's great for testing, developing for a new platform, and for learning about new features in other Microsoft products in which you may not normally be exposed to.

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The MSDN subscription isn't necessarily about access to documentation but it gives you a few key pieces of functionality.

• Software licenses for Visual Studio, Office, Windows, etc.
• Technical Support Incidents - For when you can't answer the question
• MSDN Magazine Subscription (Yes you can get this outside of this as well)

I'm sure that there are some other things, but the license and support benefits are by far the "reasons" to have a MSDN subscription.

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If you really want to grow your ability as a .NET developer the best way is to spend time around other developers using the same toolset. There are just too many tools in the .NET environment to experience them all yourself. Especially since you don't have other co-workers explorering the .NET environment with you.

If I were you, I'd check the web for any .NET user's groups located near you and attend their meetings. Those can be great places to pick up new ideas/ways of using the tools.

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Among other things you get a license for Visual Studio and Office. You also get access to a wide range of operating systems and applications you may use to test your own software. For instance you may want to test your software on different versions of Windows, or if you develop software for Exchange Server you probably need to install this product without having to buy a full production license just to be able to develop software.