John Lamansky

I found a webpage with some nice-looking animated GIF free public domain progress bars and activity indicators. (Wow, how many adjectives is that?) If you’re into AJAX development (or dabbling in it, like me), these little images will probably come in handy at some point.

This sounds too good to be true. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is indeed legitimate.

Microsoft is running a promotion whereby upon purchase of an OEM version of Windows Vista Ultimate you get the following hardware items for free:

• Kingston 2GB Flash Drive
• Artec HDTV Tuner
• D-Link WiFi Pocket Router
• Epson PictureMate Pal

NewEgg.com also has a promotion page for this deal.

The value of the items wasn’t advertised, but I found the model numbers for 3 of the 4 products and did some searching. Here’s what I found:

• Kingston 2GB Flash Drive – $76.99
• Artec HDTV Tuner – $59.99
• D-Link WiFi Pocket Router – $46.99
• Epson PictureMate Pal – Couldn’t find the model number; an Epson PictureMate Pal printer on NewEgg (don’t know if it’s the same one) cost $133.99, so I think that’s a safe guess

The total price for these four items adds up to $317.96. And what how much is Vista Ultimate OEM from NewEgg? Yep, only $199.99.

Assuming you were able to resell these hardware items at the above prices, you would get Vista Ultimate for free and get $117.97 extra. Or you could keep one or two of the items and sell the rest to recoup the cost of Vista. Or you could just keep all of them. All the same, totally cool.

Google announced yesterday that its free email service is now open for registration. From a post on the Official Google Blog:

Gmail sign-ups are now open worldwide! No more waiting for someone to invite you—just create an account directly at www.gmail.com

Read more, or go to Gmail.com to register.

Dell is giving away 12 free laptops every day from July 27 to August 31 as part of their back-to-school 2006 instant win game. Worth a shot, methinks.

After playing a few times, I think I know why they can afford to do this: every time you play, they survey you with a computer-related question or two or three. If a lot of people play, I can imagine this data being quite valuable to them! But personally I don’t really care if Dell knows what types of computer equipment I purchased in the past year; but some people might.

I’ll let you know if I win anything.

According to an announcement email from Skype:

Calls to friends and family on Skype have always been free. Now we’ve made calls within the US and Canada to all phones totally free till the end of the year.

Starting from today it doesn’t matter if it’s a Skype-to-Skype call or a call to landline or mobile phone – it’s free as long as you’re calling from within the US or Canada to US or Canadian phone number.

Neat-O!

I do wonder how SkypeOut purchasers are taking this news, though.

According to a blog post on MSDN, Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition will be free permanently!

From the blog post:

We are incredibly excited to announce that effective April 19th, 2006, all Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions including Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual J#, Visual C++, and Visual Web Developer Express will be free permanently!

Prior to this pricing announcement, Visual Studio Express Editions were promotionally discounted to be free for one year, starting on November 7th, 2005. With this announcement, the promotional discount for Visual Studio Express is now permanent and Express will continue to be free.

The key reason for the pricing change was you. You’ve helped make Visual Studio Express a runaway hit, and we’re proud to announce that in the five months since its launch, Express has been downloaded over 5 million times!

Who knew Wikipedia had free wallpaper? I recently discovered that they have a whole list of wallpaper-worthy images from Wikipedia’s various encyclopedia articles.

Some of the images are georgeous, although I don’t see why they have a close-up drawing of a flea on the list…

You may have received an email from Skype today (if you’re a user of their VoIP software), saying that they’re offering 10 free minutes of their SkypeOut service, which allows Skypers to call people who are using landlines.

Just in case you missed the email, here’s an excerpt:

Sometimes not all of the people you want to talk to are on Skype. That’s why we have SkypeOut, a pretty cheap way to call landlines and mobiles around the world at local rates. What’s more, we’re giving away 10 minutes of Skype Credit today to anyone who would like to try SkypeOut for free. We’re nice like that.

You can claim 10 minutes of Skype Credit today and try SkypeOut for free.

Hurry, you need to claim your free credit before midnight tonight

If you’re in the USA, you’ll find a “Get a free Skype gift” button on your account page. Hurry. You need to click on the button before the offer expires tonight, then, ‘hey presto’, your account will be topped up with the extra credit. It’s our little gift to you. We hope you like it.

Don’t worry if you’re too late to claim your gift. We’ll be offering SkypeOut Gift Days throughout February and March, so keep checking back on our blog, where we’ll post details as the next one is approaching.

Looks like they’ll keep offering free Skype minutes during the next two months. Keep your eyes peeled; these free minutes could add up.

That’s right: Microsoft is offering the components that make up Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition for free until November 7, 2006. So yeah, you have a bunch of time left to download them. There’s six Express products, all of which are being offered for free:

• Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition
• Visual C# 2005 Express Edition
• Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition
• Visual J# 2005 Express Edition
• Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition
• SQL Server 2005 Express Edition

Microsoft does clarify on their site that the downloads will not be free until November 7 – they will be 100% free forever if you download them before that date. Considering each Express product will cost $49, this free offer will save you $294. Microsoft also claims that registering the Express products will give you thousands of dollars worth of free stuff. Sounds good to me.

According to this PCWorld staff blog post, Opera is offering free registration codes for its browser as part of its tenth anniversary up until midnight today (August 31). Just visit this Opera page, type in your email address, and then copy/paste the generated registration codes.

At the moment, my “John’s Choice” in the web browser area is Mozilla Firefox, but access to this free no-ads version could give me a chance to try out and possibly review the Opera browser.