Non-startup Microsoft ISV development, on the cheap? [closed]

Question

While there are a handful of great programs for ISV Startups (BizSpark, Emplower ISV, etc), the only option avaiable for non-startups seems to be Visual Studio w/ MSDN. It's not that expensive (I was quoted $10,080/yr for 8 developers), but I'm fairly sure that we'd be just as fine without it.

We need pretty standard dev workstations (Windows, Office, VS2008), a small handful of actual servers (app, file, domain, etc), and a whole bunch of "disposable" testing servers (used to test installation/usage of the software product).

Here's the plan:

• Action Pack ($300/yr, includes 10x Windows/Office licenses and 1x server licenses, etc)
• 8x Visual Studio 2008 Standard Upgrade, Retail (in the $150/ea range, no need to buy full version)
• 6x Server 2008 licenses, Retail (in the $500/ea range on eBay)
• Evaluation editions of Server (VHD or normal)
• Free Hyper-V Server to run evals

If my math serves me right, that's a cost of ~$4500 for the first year, and $300 for the following years. And not only that, we get all those cool plastic boxes.

The downside (as I see it) is that we have to recycle the "disposable" servers every 120 days (perhaps a good thing, so we can test our installations?) and we don't get every piece of software Microsoft makes (I have no idea what we'd do with it, though).

So I'm wondering... is this a crazy idea? Am I just being a complete cheapskate? Will this actually work?

Answer 1

How about starting a new company that qualifies for bizspark? (Joking, kind of)

Answer 2

Just some random questions:

Do all license agreements allow the software to be reinstalled permanently every 120 days?
As far as I know running evaluation software permanently, reinstalling it every X days is considered 'abusing' the evaluation license in my country and therefore counts as illegal usage.

Are you sure you can do without a profiler?
Visual Studio Standard doesn't have one...

How much is your time worth?
As in: How much time will go into setting up this 'reinstall everything every X days' setup. I would think this takes at least a day, everytime you do this... you can only backup specific things and settings, not just the whole server. Therefore if you decides you use some new server components you'll have to remember / make sure you reinstall all of these components at the next 'reinstall'-day. Even in the best-case scenario of one day per evaluation period, that will be 24 developer-hours.

And at last, to answer your question:

Am I just being a complete cheapskate?

Yes, you are ;-)