Older MS software with developer licenses?

Question

I produce server software and have been fine with all Linux environments so far, both for production and as deployment target. However, I want to provide a broader choice of target environments in the future and I'm also planning features that would consume and produce Office documents.

As a first step, I am looking for a good way to get a number of MS software products (XP, Vista, Server 2003 & 2008, Office 2000, 2003 & 2007 ...) to put on some VMs in my testing setup, so I can start to play around.

So far, I get quite a good impression from what I read about MS's partner program (aka Action Pack). The only thing I'm missing from what the website tells me is older software versions. As I want to mimick possible customers' setups and there's always a lot of people that run older versions, that would be quite important for the testing scenario.

Eventually, I'm going to face similar questions with Apple OS X, so if anybody has some hints on that, I'd be glad, too.

Answer 1

I really think that you are looking for an MSDN subscription, with an MSDN subscription you get access to the older software and can use for development/testing.

I would read up on the details from the MSDN site. They list the OS versions and items you can get with each.

Answer 2

As a Microsoft Certified Partner you can access the MSDN Subscriber downloads. There you will find all (?) versions of windows back to 3.1 and most versions of office (back to office 95, but excluding Office 2000).

The licenses allow you to use the software for development, but not for production use, so you should be fine with it.