Indeed, SharePoint Designer is now free

Download link to get your free SharePoint Designer is here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=baa3ad86-bfc1-4bd4-9812-d9e710d44f42

 

So, that’s great.  But then again, now that means folks that haven’t been trained can cause more grief than usual – so, as people can get into mischief, locking down the ability for Designer to connect to a SharePoint site is a worthwhile consideration now, more than ever as people go to download SPD. http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepointdesigner/archive/2008/11/25/locking-down-sharepoint-designer.aspx

 

Also, this from the SharePoint Designer Team:

a) Letter to Customers

b) Frequently Asked Questions

c) Free Download

Also, make sure to watch this video where Tom Rizzo and J.R. Arredondo discuss these changes and provide some insights into what is coming in the future (pick the appropriate version for your bandwidth).

· Small size video (6MB)

· Medium size video (17 MB)

· Large size video (83 MB)

 

On a side note…

It would appear IE8 has been fully released to production (with little fanfare it would seem?) on March 19th (maybe this is old news but nobody said a peep to me). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_8