A good friend and fellow IT consultant at Sureteq had been encouraging me to get a Microsoft TechNet subscription for quite some time… so I finally did.

For those who don’t know, a TechNet subscription allows you to download full versions of ANY Microsoft software for “evaluation” purposes. The theory is, the sooner the IT community goes out and tries this new software, the sooner they will feel comfortable rolling it out into their organizations. It’s a good model.

The subscription also comes with two Microsoft troubleshooting tickets (which more than covers the cost of the subscription) and access to forums and other valuable resources.

There are two types of subscriptions: download only and DVD. My recommendation (for newbies) is to skip the DVDs and just go with the download only option. You’ll save a couple hundred dollars by downloading and burning your own ISOs.

OK, so this post was supposed to be about Twitter, right? Well, it is. And here’s why…

In the past, I’ve always done a quick Google search for promo codes whenever I purchase something online. Sometimes you get lucky, assuming the forum you found isn’t too dated. Most of the time, you have to try quite a few codes before you finally find one that works.

Yesterday I discovered that Twitter is a great way to search for promo codes because the results are nearly REAL-TIME. That means the older stuff if filtered out. As soon as someone posts something that works, it’s almost immediately available in Twitter’s search engine.

Here you can see I searched for “technet promo code” and actually got a promo code from Microsoft TechNet France. I don’t care what language it is, those 7 magical little characters (TNWIN7L) saved me $100 bucks!

Find online discounts using Twitter's search

After Tweeting about my good fortune, a friend turned me onto this site: CouponCabin.com. It looks like a great resource, and there are many others like it.

Try searching for other discounts on Twitter and share whatever you find in the comments below. As for me, I’m off to install Windows 7…

12/1/09 update: Got $50 off an annual subscription to Lynda.com, the BEST online training resource for creative professionals.