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Free Online and Offline .NET, SQL and Azure Training Resources from Microsoft

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I was asked a little while back to pull together the best training resources for .NET development to feed into a MSDN UK site. I thought it would be useful to share here as well. By no means everything is listed but sometimes less is more :-). Enjoy:

Top Tip:

Watch out – these are sometimes big downloads. For instance I just downloaded a high def PDC2009 session at 600MB! I recommend you check out Free Download Manager – it is a great open source tool for working with large files.

Offline Training

• Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit
• .NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit
• ASP.NET MVC Training Kit
• SQL Server 2008 Developer Training Kit
• Windows Azure Platform Training Kit
• C# and XNA Programming Course – detailed training designed for faculties.

Microsoft sites focused on free training (yep, we have at least 3 of them!)

• Microsoft Visual Studio Training Portal
• Ramp Up community-based learning (ASP, PHP, SharePoint, Mobile and more)
• msdev.com for free training (Silverlight, Windows 7, Application Compatibility, SQL Server 2008, Azure and more)

Microsoft Shows available on-demand:

• Watch the sessions from the PDC2009 developer conference (Azure, VS2010 and more)
• Watch the sessions from the PDC2008 developer conference (Azure, VS2010 and more)
• Watch the sessions from the MIX09 conference (Silverlight, Web and more)
  • The UK ReMix event from Sept 2008

Online (Video, ScreenCasts, Webcasts, Tutorials, Labs)

• Channel 9
  • My teams little corner of Channel 9
• Virtual Labs for Visual Studio 2008 and more
• “How Do I?” Videos for Visual Studio. Which includes content from 
  • http://www.asp.net/learn/ Videos and Tutorials for ASP.NET
  • http://windowsclient.net/learn/videos_wpf.aspx Videos for Windows Presentation Foundation
  • http://silverlight.net/Learn/ Videos for Silverlight

And lest we forget:

• The excellent MSDN Magazine is available free online.