The upcoming MSDN offerings will provide copies of Microsoft's latest and greatest, including Visual Studio 2005, Windows Vista, Team System, et al. Unfortunately, the highest-level MSDN package is $10,000 (pricing chart). Which is huge. Huge enough to make development shops look at Subversion (instead of VSS) and other alternatives. Especially when you consider that if you have a QA department, all your testers need an MSDN license in order to test software built using MSDN-licensed tools (oh yes, it's true).

One big way to get that software but save on licenses is to enroll in the Empower ISV program. For $375/year, you get 5 MSDN Universal licenses, plus a bunch of other stuff. The downside (?) is you have to actually build something using Microsoft tools, and the license is only good for a year. And you also have to take a stab at getting some people MS-certified.