SMUG: SIUE Microsoft Users Group?

[Jerry]

Microsoft is making a big push to have relationships with Universities. SIUE was chosen as one of Universities in this area that they would like to have a relationship with.

One of the things they are offering is to support a Student Microsoft User Group. If there is enough interest these are the things they can offer:

1. Stipend to the Group Organizer (I don't know what they pay, they just said they would)

2. Tech Talks
3. Launch Events
4. Beta releases of new software packages

Two questions:
1. Who is interested?
2. Who is willing to be the a Coordinator?

The coodinator should be someone who will be here for at least one more academic year and has good organizational skills.

Post your thoughts here. If we have more than one person who wants to be the CAOS Officer to SMUG then we might want to hold an election.

[Stiffler]

I am interested in the talks and demos. Can students have free copies of MS beta products? I think this fits perfectly in with CAOS, and what it stands for. There will always be Windows users, so we need to find a way to help them get past the toils and troubles of MS products. I've been wanting to try out Windows Advanced Server 2003 for a long while, and it just recently went RTM (Release to Manufacturing, also meaning the code went gold, also meaning it's as done as it will get until the service releases). If I had time I would love to be a coordinator. I mean if this will take place over the Summer and Fall 2003, I can do it. Also, just as long as this does not cost the CS department a lot of money, because there are plenty of open source solutions that we could go with.

I will say one thing about MS Products. They do seem to be getting more and more stable with ech new release.

With that in mind here is a list of opensource to MS products:
Linux w/X11 --->  MS Windows 4003
Dev-C++ 5  --->  MS Visual Studio .Net
wxWindows (www.wxwindows.org) ---> None (Better than VB)
Samba ---> MS Windows Network
LDAP ---> Ative tree thing ???

Any others that I'm missing?


Jon

[DaleDoe]

I'm interested.  However, I've been so busy this semester I haven't made it to a single Linux User's meeting.  By next fall I think I'll be able to attend some of these events around here.

Hey, Jon, do you know where I can get a copy of the Windows 4003 you mentioned?  On second thought, it probably won't even run on my machine because I bought it way back in the year 2000. :-D

[Michael Kennedy]

I'd also be interesting in the talks, beta releases, etc.  It certainly wouldnt hurt to see and hear about products before I have to support them at work.