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Geek Book Deals from Manning and Apress

Price tag reading "Sale"I wanted to post this earlier, but a number of things, shopping included, conspired to keep me from blogging until just now.

If you’re reading this and it’s still December 21st, Manning Publications, publishers of fine books such as C# in Depth, Real-World Functional Programming, ASP.NET MVC in Action and The Art of Unit Testing and even a whole book on Dependency Injection (and yes, they have a lot of non-Microsoft books as well) is having a half-price off all ebooks sale – but only on Monday, December 21st, Use the discount code dotd1221 when you place your order and the books will be half price.

If it’s after December 21st but before the new year, Apress has a deal for you! If you order off their site and use the discount code APRESSHOLIDAYML, they’ll take 25% off your entire purchase.

If you’ve been holding off buying new geeks books and waiting for some deals, those deals are here!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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The Ultimate Steal: Office Ultimate for $64!

Package for Office 2007 Ultimate: "$64.00 (Canadian!) for students / Glossy reflective table not included)"

Here’s a great “back-to-school” deal — if you’re a student at an eligible Canadian university or college, you can get the top-of-the-line edition of Microsoft Office 2007 for CDN$64. That’s the fullest version of Office that you can get, which means you get:

  • OneNote (Note-taking software par excellence, the Office app I personally use the most, which is why I listed it first. I am the OneNote king.
  • Word (Word processor)
  • Excel (Spreadsheets)
  • PowerPoint (Presentations)
  • Outlook (Email, calendar and task management)
  • Publisher (For producing publications, whether print or online)
  • Access (The little database that could)
  • Groove (Collaboration and file sharing)
  • InfoPath (For making and filling out forms)

The Ultimate Steal The program through which you can get all this software for around the cost of three cases of beer is called The Ultimate Steal, and it’s quite simple:

  • You have to be a student actively enrolled in one of the eligible Canadian universities or colleges. The simplest way to prove this is to use your school email address; there are other ways to prove you’re a student, and they’re explained on the site.
  • You have to have a course load of at least 0.5. If you’re enrolled, it shouldn’t be too hard to qualify for that.

The super-deluxe, all-singing, all-dancing version of Office for CDN$64. That’s a pretty goal deal.

Thanks to my coworker Christian Beauclair for pointing this out on Canadian Developer Connection!

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The TechDays $299 Deal

For the price of this (an Xbox 360 Elite or $300), you get all this (conference sessions, opportunities to meet people, a supercharged brain, Microsoft TechNet subscription, developer resources, a happy cat)

The Early Bird Price is Going Away Soon

The $299 early bird pricing for TechDays Canada 2009’s Vancouver and Toronto stops will vanish after Monday, August 31st. From September 1st onward, if you want to catch TechDays in Vancouver (Monday, September 14th – Tuesday, September 15th) and Toronto (Tuesday, September 29th – Wednesday, September 30th), you’ll have to pay the full price of $599. Why pay double when you don’t have to?

The TechDays Formula

Continuing with this article’s theme of using pictograms to explain things, here’s TechDays in a nutshell, pictorial-style:

The TechDays Formula -- TechDays = Content from premium conferences far, far away + Delivered by local speakers at venues close to home + Extra events and goodies for you to enjoy We take presentation sessions that cover getting the most out of current and new Microsoft tools and technologies from big conferences like TechEd, which are typically held in a large city in the southern United States, at a large convention centre, near large hotels and will set you back a couple “large” for registration, transportation and accommodation. TechDays 2009 features over 40 sessions split into these tracks:

  • Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform
  • Developer Fundamentals and Best Practices
  • Windows Client
  • Servers, Security and Management
  • Communications and Collaboration

We update that content where necessary and find local speakers to present it. We pick out speakers who are either well-versed in the session topic or who are simply bright techies with a thirst for knowledge, a knack for presenting and who have been meaning to get well-versed in that topic. Whenever possible, we try to get someone who lives in the area of the conference city, because TechDays isn’t just about spreading knowledge; it’s also about helping developers make connections with their peers nearby.

We also set up extra events and goodies. Attendees get a one-year subscription to TechNet, which alone is worth more than the price of the early bird registration and gets you access to all kinds of goodies including Windows 7. There’s also all the content from the TechEd conference. You also get the learning kit DVD packed with goodies to help you get the most out of Microsoft’s tools and tech. We’re throwing in some discount codes for books. We’ll also be announcing surprise events in your city – watch this space for details!

And last but not least, don’t underestimate the job-and-employee-seeking opportunities that a gathering like TechDays provides. Events like TechDays are where opportunities happen!

All This for $299

3 Canadian 100-dollar bills, minus one loonie

And don’t forget, that’s $299 Canadian, for content from conferences that cost 7 times as much. And with extra goodies such as a TechNet subscription (which costs more than the early bird fee and gets you Windows 7) thrown in. Plus a chance to meet up with your peers as well as us evangelists, whom you should think of as “your people on the inside”. It’s a great deal, and it’s going away after next Monday, so sign up now!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.