I renewed my Microsoft Action Pack subscription today for $199. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s a partner program for consultants, Value Added Resellers (VARs) and other folks in the IT industry who are using and/or selling Microsoft products.

In other words, full-blown legitimate licenses of Microsoft Office, Windows XP, Windows XP Server, and more! for 199 bucks.

You get up to ten licenses for Microsoft Office and Windows XP. You also get all the SQL Server and Server versions of Windows for internal deployment. And you get things like Front Page, MapPoint (which is great), SharePoint Server, OneNote, etc. If you are using ANY of these products in conjunction with your work, it’s well worth it. You don’t necessarily have to renew every year as I do (first-time sign-up is more like $299 I believe), but you are supposed to destroy the software you have. Yup. You are.

You get updates every quarter, which includes their Not For Distribution (NFD) Software (Office, etc). You also get product guides and information about the Microsoft Business Juggernaut. I admittedly have not read them, but they look pretty polished. The last one that I saw was something about being able to configure and sell licenses of Windows and Windows Server for your own business consulting practice…say you set up a computer for a client, need to slap a license of Windows on it. There is some kind of kit you can get.

The only complaint I have is that their online support and reneweal process is of incredibly low quality. The online forms are confusing and poorly designed. The first couple of years when I joined, they continually messed up their own databases and did not follow through with email inquiries to correct them. A mess. Things appear to have stabilized somewhat.