As a student of the University of Phoenix, I have made it a point to mention Dreamspark to every class I attend. Microsoft really does love the community, and is around to help those who use its products for development, or just for leisure as well. There are user groups all over the world that a dev can keep in touch with the latest Microsoft technologies. If you don't like attending groups in this world, there's even groups for virtual worlds.
As continued proof of how much they do care about keeping us in the loop, Tom's blog ASP.NET Debugging has recently enlightened me of a post from BlogMS that outlines every bit of software that you can get free from Microsoft. No longer will my posts focus on just Dreamspark when it comes to my University of Phoenix student awareness posts, because now I can just list it all!
I definitely recommend looking through the list, frankly I'd be surprised if I realized half of these services were available before digging around the list.
http://blogs.technet.com/blogms/pages/microsoft-free-software.aspx