My only complaint is that it can be hard to find the exact program you want. Microsoft is very, very generous with MSDN, and avoids a lot of the licensing hassles that would drive us nuts. It is a brilliant idea for them to separate the subscription from the Microsoft, and allow them to be linked and un-linked like this. Either way, I got the impression that Microsoft understands that developers can move between companies, and intentionally designed the system around the developer, rather than the employer or machine.
#VISUAL STUDIO SUBSCRIPTION DOWNLOAD#
When you leave the company, they can remove the subscription from your account and give it to someone else so you can't download anything new, but the stuff you already downloaded will continue working. Maybe my company set it up incorrectly and gave me more control than they intended, but that was my experience. So, your MSDN subscription is, for all intents and purposes, truly yours. In my experience, if your company pays for your MSDN account, the MSDN subscription is granted to your personal Microsoft account. And you can always email Microsoft and ask for more.
#VISUAL STUDIO SUBSCRIPTION WINDOWS 8.1#
So, you get 5 downloads of Window 8 32-bit, another 5 of Windows 8 64-bit, another 5 of Windows 8.1 32-bit, another 5 of Windows 8.1 64-bit, etc. Note that the 5 downloads is for each instance of a program.
With 5 downloads, you don't really need to worry about recycling or recovering licenses. You get 5 downloads per program and Microsoft openly says that the subscription is limited to the *developer*, not the machine - so you can download all the same programs to your home computer, and you can keep them after the MSDN subscription ends. It probably ties that download instance to the machine.
I believe your understanding is accurate I've only had the MSDN subscription as one member of a business account, and it was about a year ago so I may be out of date.īut overall, MSDN subscription allows you to download and use practically the entire Microsoft consumer/developer suite (so all of Windows, Visual Studio, Office, SQL, and other things - but probably not Dynamics or other subscription programs), and I have never had any frustrating licensing hassles.