Finance for sofware?

I wrote about Dreamspark Premium a few months back on this blog, I thought I would go along the same topic and reassure some students about software and access to software. Especially in the computer science field, software is key. Just being a student will give you access to Autodesk software and it basically has no limitations. At the University of Bedfordshire we have Dreamspark Premium so students have access to a lot of industry standard software for free. So you can install Windows 8, Office 2007, Visual studio and even Microsoft Expression Studio all free! There’s a huge amount of Autodesk software free for students. I know personally for me, it was a worry because the cost of software these days can be more than the course you’re paying for. 

Student discounts are always great, a lot of companies have some type of educational or student discount these days. Even if they don’t, I personally don’t hesitate contacting them. Being a student, you need to be doing a lot of work at home, not only should you be doing units but keep up to date. Going to events, attending societies and basically everything you can to keep active.  Something I personally have benefited from is a company called Novedge. They have free webinars where you can actually watch lecturers from industry experts on different technical fields. Not only can you watch, but if you attend it live you’ll be able to ask them questions. There’s literally software and tools announced in the webinars, it’s a great place just to watch and understand new software. 

I thought this would be a great help for students who were worrying about finances and software. Plus obviously if you just attend university you get access to a huge amount of databases full of Books, journals and articles on almost every topic. Even if there isn’t you may be able to get the library to invest in the book if they think it’s relevant to your field or others will benefit with the purchase.

Here are some links that I talk about:

https://www.dreamspark.com/Account/signIn.aspx

http://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software

 http://www.novedge.com/webinarseries/default.asp

Plus my last post about Dreamspark is here…
http://bedscomputing.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/dreamspark-premium.html