Microsoft have just made available a time-limited vhd version of "WSS 3.0 with Visual Studio 2005" at

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1beeac6f-2ea1-4769-9948-74a74bd604fa&displaylang=en&tm 

There are a couple of things with this.

Firstly, why on earth don't they tell us on the download page how many days/months/years this time-limited version works for. I would have thought that was pretty important information. Is anyone for instance going to bother trying to develop for SharePoint using Visual Studio if they are only given 30 days to do so ?

Note: I have no idea if it is 30 days or not, because the web page doesn't tell me either. See P.P.S. I now know

The other thing of course is why bother at all. WSS 3.0 is a free download anyway (actually two because there's a copy of the original WSS 3.0 and also a copy that includes SP1), and that is time-unlimited, so why bother with a time-limited version at all?

The answer to that obviously lies in the addition of Visual Studio in that vhd so you can develop (or rather try out development) using the Visual Studio WSS additions which can only be installed on the same server as WSS 3.0 itself.

But in order for that sort of testing to be worthwhile the time period needs to be at least 3 months. is It ?

Another question they don't bother answering on that download page is whether this is the WSS 3.0 version with or without SP1.

Sighs. Sometimes you get the impression that the people who are responsible for these download pages just can't be bothered to put themselves in the mindset of the people who will be using them.

P.S. The other method (if you just want WSS 3.0) is to install the Windows Server 2003 VHD from here

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=77F24C9D-B4B8-4F73-99E3-C66F80E415B6&displaylang=en

and then to download the normal WSS 3.0 (incl SP1 version); follow the usual pre-requisites on the server and then install 'WSS 3.0+SP1'.

Of course they don't tell you on *that* download how long the trial period is either. Sighs again.

P.P.S. You'll now see that the download page does say that this is the version of WSS 3.0 that includes SP1. (It also includes the "3.0" that it didn't before).

There must be a policy against saying how time-limited a download is because that part doesn't seem to have changed on the download page. What I can probably say without dire consequences (for me) is that what "time-limited" means here is not the number of days used but a fixed date at which this expires.

*** I should learn to look through the whole article. The fact that it's valid to 30th Sept. 2008  has been added as an "Additional Information" section so low down I didn't see it. Thanks to the guy who let me know that he'd added it there in response to my comments (yes, really) ... ***

I encourage you to start using this vhd as soon as possible if you want to try out SharePoint development using it as you will then get the maximum amount of usage time possible.