Free Downloads and MSDN Software
Microsoft Academic Alliance (MSDN)
The department has a subscription to the Microsoft Developers Network Academic Alliance program. This entitles our students free access to certain Microsoft products. Over the years, the Microsoft program has had various names -- its newest name is "Azure Dev Tools for Teaching."
To download a Microsoft CD, you must log on to the Dev Tools For Teaching website. Follow that link, and you will be prompted to log on using your Microsoft account. If you don't have one, you will have the opportunity to create one. Once you have logged on, go to your account page and click on "Manage your account." There is an option to add an additional email account. Click on that and add your odin email address: username@cs.csubak.edu -- Your Microsoft account should now recognize you as eligible for the program. Your logon ID will be your email address, and because this privilege is limited to CS students, it will only work for email addresses in the cs.csubak.edu domain.
Once you log on, you may select one of the titles that are represented by the icons on the page, or you may choose from the drop down list. Some products are set up for you to download over the internet and some you can purchase for the cost of media from Microsoft. In all cases, the required serial number will be sent to you via email from MSDNAA.
The preferred method of obtaining software is by downloading. If you are downloading using Firefox (recommended) you should be aware that the file you download from the MSDNAA site should be renamed to have an .exe ending to make it executable. That program is the actual downloader that will download your requested program. In most cases you will end up with an ISO image in your temporary directory.
Most students may no longer own a CD burner. It is possible to emulate a CD-ROM drive with an emulator, such as the open-source WinCDEmu. This allows you to mount ISO images without having to burn them on a CD or flash drive. Otherwise if you own a CD-ROM drive, you will need a CD burning program that can handle ISO images. Windows OS supports this natively. An alternative is ImgBurn. ImgBurn is freeware and works very well. Also note that some products require multiple CDs. You must select each CD for checkout when you reserve the product.
VMware Academic Program
We have a similar program for VMware products. You must send Steve an email from your odin account requesting an account. The easiest way is to type "steve" into the "to" field in alpine and request a VMware account. You will end up with an email from VMware's site with links for you to create an account there.
Site License for Mathematica
CSUB has a site license for Mathematica from Wolfram. Details on how to get your copy.
Site License for MATLAB
CSUB has a site license for MATLAB from Mathworks. Details on how to get your copy.