I received a rather disheartening email from Microsoft last evening. Effective August 31, 2013, they will be retiring the TechNet supscription service. THis means no more full license downloads of Microsoft products such as Small Business Server, SQL, Exchange, Windows, SCOM, etc. If you want those, you will need to either rebuild your computer with evaluation software every 30,60, or 90 days, or you can pay for the MSDN subscription which is over 10 times the price. Details from the email are below. A separate article will be posted in the near future detailing alternatives to all of the products available on TechNet.