Free Microsoft Office 2007

If you can find an event coming to a city near you, here is an easy opportunity to get a free copy of the new Microsoft Office 2007. You can sign up for a half day session or stay for the full day of presentations. If your into IT/Microsoft info, these events are very informative. If you don't care about the upcoming functionality, you can sign up for the 1/2 day event, sit through a couple hours of speeches, then claim your Product Key for Office 2007 and Groove 2007. With these product keys, you can download the products from Microsoft for free. If you don't make it to the event, you can still use this link to download a 60 day free trial of the new software.

Free Cisco and Microsoft Training!!!

Is your company budget too tight to allow you to go to training? If so, there is a solution out there for you. Train Signal Training offers Free Network+ training. You can download video taken directly from the course material. Not only that, but you can take practice tests to help prepare for those certification tests. I just took a practice test, only to find out that I need more studying. I will be watching their free video training later today to gain that missing knowledge.

Ready for a New Day?

I was fortunate enough for my company to allow me to take a day off to drive to Indianapolis for the Microsoft Launch Event. All in all, it was an interesting day. I had the opportunity to see some demos of all the new software they are launching this month. They have come up with really good functionality. I think their combination of products has finally surpassed the functionality of Lotus Notes. I usually like going to these events and speak to the various other companies that come and setup a booth. However, this time, it seems like about 85% of the booths merely represented training facilities. Now this was fine this time as I hope to get some training and certification this year. The certifications have never been high on my priority list, but all of the job opportunities I am seeing out there have Microsoft certifications classified as a "Highly desirable". But, back to the Microsoft Launch Event. For once, I didn't feel like all the presenters were really just pushing the NEW products, but were also informing us of the functionality in our current products that we may not have known about. I've got a short list of items in our current Windows and Exchange environment that I want to take a look at and play with here at work.

As with all events like this, there were goodies to be gotten. Since it was in Indianapolis, one of the booth companies was there to taut a website they are about to launch for the Indianapolis Colts, so they were passing out free Colts caps and Colts hand towels. Then there were the other useless items that tend to collect dust on work desks like LED key chains, Frisbee's, and cheap pens. But the big item from this event was from Microsoft. They gave out a t-shirt and a copy of the new Office 2007 and Groove 2007 clients. I plan on installing the new version of Office tonight at home. That should be fun to play with for a couple days.