Not only is Microsoft giving away it new Windows 10 operating system for Free, the company is also giving away 100’s of Free eBooks covering a wide range of Microsoft technologies-including Windows 10.Let’s take a closer look.

The Ligman connection

As you may know, this isn’t the first time Microsoft has made a collection of Microsoft eBooks available for Free. The books are listed on Eric Ligman’s MSDN Blog. Ligman, who is a Microsoft Senior Sales Excellence Manager, has been posting blogs on his site since 2004 and more than once his posts have publicized collections of Free eBooks. This time around, the collection is the largest I’ve ever seen. As I mentioned, there are several eBooks covering Windows 10; however, you can find eBooks covering Office, PowerShell, SharePoint, Azure, Exchange, SQL, Lync, and many more Microsoft products. There are even some non-Microsoft eBooks in the collection. You really must investigate the full list for yourself.

The Windows 10 eBooks

After scouring through the list, I uncovered the following eBooks about Windows 10:

Introducing Windows 10 for IT Professionals Preview Edition

Written by Ed Bott for Microsoft Press, this eBook is a preview edition of the Introducing Windows 10 for IT Professionals book that will be available for purchase soon after Windows 10 launches. As Bott notes in the eBook’s introduction:

“This book is a preview, a work in progress about a work in progress. It offers a snapshot of the Windows 10 Technical Preview as of April 2015, on the eve of the BUILD Developers’ Conference in San Francisco. By design, this preview edition has a limited shelf life. After Microsoft releases Windows 10 to the general public this summer, I’ll revise and expand the content in this edition to reflect the finished product.”

Even so, this 101-page eBook provides a terrific outline of the Windows 10 operating system’s features and technologies in a generalized fashion.

Work Smart by Microsoft IT – Exploring Windows 10

This 18-page guide covers all of the new features in the Windows 10 operating system, including Cortana and the Microsoft Edge browser. Each section contains a brief introduction to the new feature, along with a couple of step-by-step instructions on using the feature.

Azure AD & Windows 10: Better Together for Work or School

This 64-page eBook is more like a whitepaper than a book and discusses the consumerization of IT (CoIT) and how you can combine the power of Azure AD and Windows 10 to create an effect solution in a work or school environment. Written by a pair of Microsoft France employees, this document will show you how to build an Azure test lab where you can experiment with the new features that Windows 10 brings to the table. The paper’s abstract begins with:

“With the consumerization of IT (CoIT) along with the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, organizations of all sizes are facing growing needs to protect and control corporate sensitive information whilst being pressured to provide a seamless access to it from an end-user perspective. Thinking about CoIT indeed necessarily leads to some security and management challenges.”

and ends with:

“The document demonstrates how Azure AD and Windows 10 can enable together the most frequent and relevant CoIT scenarios.”

Windows Technical Preview Quick Guide

This 10-page eBook was designed to be a guide to the Windows Technical Preview program. As such, it’s a bit dated, due to the fact that the program and Windows 10 have changed quite a bit since this eBook was originally released. However, it still contains some valuable information.

OneNote\PowerPoint\Word Preview – Quick Start Guides

Microsoft has created a small collection of Touch Versions of office products for use on Windows 10 tablets. While the actual touch versions include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote, there are only three of these Quick Start Guides in the collection of free eBooks. Each one is 4-pages long and provides you with very basic information.

What’s your take?

Have you downloaded free eBooks from Microsoft in the past? Will you download any of the free Windows 10 eBooks? Are there other eBooks in the collection that you would recommend to your TechRepublic colleagues? Let us know in the discussion thread below.