FREE! Now there’s a word that everyone can get excited about, right? Well, after looking at the results of the three “Free Microsoft eBooks” posts I have shared here this fiscal year (Microsoft’s fiscal year is July 1 – June 30), it is amazing to see the excitement that has come about from them and the incredible amount of downloads that have taken place to date! Just last week, I put up thethird post in the series of Free Microsoft eBooks giveaways this fiscal year and said that I wanted to give away 1,000,000 FREE downloads of the Microsoft eBooks. I’ll admit, some people thought I was crazy to put up a target as large as 1,000,000, but I had faith in my blog readers and social media followers to help spread the word and share the excitement about the offer.
Today, I am happy to share some fantastic news and some information I have been asked for that you said would be helpful for you:
1) I am happy to announce that we have reached the 1,000,000 FREE download mark for the Microsoft eBooks since my post went live last week! Thank you to all of you for helping spread the word and let others know about this offer.
2) I went back and looked at how we’re doing on the downloads of all of the eBooks from my three FREE Microsoft eBooks posts this fiscal year, and I am happy to share that we have now exceeded the 3,500,000 FREE downloads mark for the almost 150 Microsoft eBooks included in my posts since they went live! It only seemed fitting that we hit the 1,000,000 mark for last week’s post in the same 24 hour period that we exceeded the 3,500,000 mark all up for the giveaways. Again, thank you to all of you for sharing these offers this year!
3) I have been asked if once we hit the 1,000,000 FREE download mark if the offer to download the books would expire. The answer is, “No, please keep downloading the books and sharing these links with your peers, counterparts, and anyone else you think could benefit from them!”
4) Several people have asked me, “Do you have a list of the most popular eBooks being downloaded out of the ones you’ve shared?” Well, I hadn’t tallied up the list and shared anything prior to today; however, since I’ve received the ask enough times and was looking at the numbers last night, I thought I would share with you the top 50 FREE Microsoft eBooks in order, in terms of number of downloads to date since I posted about them, so you can see what they are (and make sure you have them if you don’t already). Now, something to keep in mind as you look at this list of the top 50 below, remember that two of my posts went live last July and the third one just went up last week. I call this out because the ones that have been posted since last July have obviously had more time to be downloaded, so the numbers will be skewed a little just based on that. An interesting thing I found while compiling this list of the top 50 though was, there are actually four of them that are from my post last week! That’s VERY impressive to see the download numbers grow that fast for these items in just over week to overcome 11 months worth of download time for the others. The four from last week that are flying up the charts are:
- Microsoft Office 365 for professionals and small businesses: Help and How To
- Deployment guide for Office 2013
- Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
- Explore SharePoint 2013
So if you want to glean some insights into what’s hot right now and on top of people’s minds, it’s Office 365, Office 2013, Windows 8 (and app development for it), and SharePoint 2013. When you compare that list to the rest in the top 50, you see lots of interest in these topics, plus Windows Server, SQL Server, Microsoft Virtualization and Windows Phone, just to name a few. So, are you up to speed on these hot topics? If not, why not grab some FREE eBooks and get going?
Here’s the list of the Top 50 FREE Microsoft eBooks downloaded so far:
Windows 7 Power Users Guide | |||
SQL Server 2012 Developer Training Kit | |||
Developing Applications for the Cloud, 2nd Edition | |||
| Welcome to Windows 7 | |||
5) The other thing I have been asked many times is, “Do you have one single post with all of the eBooks listed so we can go through them instead of bouncing between the three different posts?” The answer to that has been No to date; however, I figured that since I was pulling together all of the stats last night, I could pull together the books into a single list as well. As such, here they are, almost 150 completely FREE Microsoft eBooks for you to download and use: (NOTE: If you don’t see a list of links below the book image, it is because it is only available in one format. Just click on the image and your download will begin)
Windows 7 Power Users Guide | Welcome to Windows 7 | ||
Deployment guide for Office 2013 Preview | Office 2010 Developer Training Kit | Office 365 Developer Training Kit | Office 365 Guides for professionals and small businesses |
Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013 Preview | Getting started with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 | Technical reference for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 | |
SQL Server 2012 Developer Training Kit | |||
Developing an Advanced Windows Phone 7.5 App that Connects to the Cloud | Developing Applications for the Cloud, 2nd Edition | ||
Exploring CQRS and Event Sourcing: A journey into high scalability, availability, and maintainability with Windows Azure PDF | |||
Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure | Deployment guide for Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP Server 2.0 Preview | Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Guides: Financials | |
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 User's Guide | Dynamics CRM 2011 Developer Training Kit | Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Implementation Guide | Digital Storytelling |
Free Tools in the Classroom | Windows Live Movie Maker in the Classroom | Windows 7 in the Classroom | Microsoft Office Web Apps Teaching Guide |
Microsoft Office in the Classroom | Developing Critical Thinking through Web Research Skills | Bing in the Classroom | |
Lync for Mac 2011 Deployment Guide | Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Resource Kit Tools | ||
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Resource Kit | Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Security Guide | Developing Applications for the Cloud – 2nd Edition | Visual Studio LightSwitch Training Kit |
"Own Your Space--Keep Yourself and Your Stuff Safe Online" Digital Book for Teens
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Once again, thank you to all of you for sharing this information with others to let them know about these resources being made available to them from Microsoft, absolutely FREE! Please continue to share these with others so they too can have access to this information to help them as they travel down their path of learning and knowledge in the computer field. I’m sure I will be putting future collections of eBooks up here on the blog as I come across more and compile further lists, so be sure you are subscribed to the blog and following me online through my variety of social media entities, including through my Microsoft Info Partner Windows Phone mobile app that brings you the latest Microsoft information directly from our teams here at Microsoft. Also, if you’re heading to Worldwide Partner Conference this year, be sure to come up, introduce yourself (if we haven’t met before), or say Hi (if we have met) and join in on becoming part of the Fantastic People of WPC13 that I will be compiling this year.
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