>Ed,
>
>Quick question. What's the difference between the s/w updates you receive with MSDN and with Technet Plus? I just received something in the mail from MS with prices for Technet. And I found the prices to be really resonable. If I would purchase this it would be on my own, not thru the company, so price is a factor.
>

TechNet contains all the various patches, KB updates, etc. for all the products updated monthly; Plus adds some beta content, etc. IT DOES NOT INCLUDE THE MSDN LIBRARY. IT DOES NOT CONTAIN THE BASE SOFTWARE, LICENSES, ETC.

IOW, it'll have all the patches for NT, but doesn't include NT as an MSDN Professional or Universal subscription does. It'll have the current KBase, but not the other MSDN Library content. It's a mechanism to keep a site relatively up to date with current fixes, drivers, etc, not to provide the developer with a test platform and tools. That's why a TechNet subscri[tion, which is what I've described, is about $300/year, whereas an MSDN Universal subscription, which includes all the operating systems, all of Visual Studio Enterprise, all of Office2000 Developer, etc. costs about $2000.

I have both; the TechNet subscription is (IMO) needed to make sure that you've got all the patches, etc. on-hand. It's nice to know that if I have to go back to install Win98 from the distribution, I don't have to go out to the WindowsUpdate site to get the current fixes - they're on the CD. I can keep the KBase on-line so that if a problem pops, I can do a quick search locally for a fix, and have it on hand; if it's not there, it might still be on the online MSKB, since it might've been updated since the CDs were last sent.

The MSDN is a different bird - the quarterly library is needed if you want to have the current info on hand, on line and searchable easily. The licesnes are needed to have the tools and the OS test platforms. And the cost of a year's subscription to Universal is certainly cheaper than the cost of Visual Studio Enterprise, Office 2000 Developer Edition, Win98, WinNT, BackOffice and the like on an individual basis.