I was doing some searching the other day for pricing on MSDN Professional vs MSDN Premium editions, comparing what was included, etc. Pro seemed to be around $1000 vs upwards of $2000 for Premium (depending on the specific version picked). Here's a comparision of the differences. For me, I was really hoping to be able to get Vista, Outlook, and things like Expression. Unfortunately, those are only available with the Premium edition. $1000 was doable, but there was no way I was going to spend $2K on software (it's still not a bad deal, all things considered). I could get the Pro version and just buy what I wanted, but that still pushed the price up to the Premium edition range.

I remember running across some great deals for the MSDN Universal subscription a few years ago on E-bay, so I thought I'd poke around there to see if there was something similar for the Premium edition. I ran across an ad for the Premium version for around $950. "Not bad" I thought, then started looking at the description to make sure it wasn't the Educational version or anything weird. Part of the way down I read some of the requirements: I needed to agree to develop a commercial software app., place a product announcement on my website, make a best effort to pass one of the MS software tests.

Hey! That suddenly started sounding really familiar. Yep, those end up being the same requirements for Microsoft's Empower program. That you can get directly from Microsoft. For $375.

Yep, these guys are really just signing you up for the Empower program for a mere $525 more (handling charge, I guess). Un-Effing believable.