If your startup participates in Microsoft Bizspark, you can use every Microsoft software for free for 3 years.

It is of little interest to me because I have never used the Microsoft stack, but if your startup does, Bizspark is the deal of the century and comes highly recommended by some of my developer friends.

I never knew that exists. Thank you very much for this.

My school (UIC) is a part of msdnaa so we get windows 7 for free.

If your university doesn't have MSDNAA - and almost any decent CompSci/IT/etc dept should have it - you can get MSDNAA through IEEE. I don't think there's any program requirement for IEEE other than being a current student. IEEE student membership for one year is $15.

MSDNAA comes with multiple copies of every version of Windows, Visual Studio, and all sorts of other pricey MS software,

Both ACM and IEEE student memberships come with MSDNAA access. The selection they have is larger than I've seen with three different universities' MSDNAA for CS students, although maybe not always that useful.

ACM offers Win 7 Professional (RTM) no more. It was pulled this week after a huge growth spike of people joining and going after several Win 7 licences.

Ah, but this is the Home Premium edition. If I could navigate their maze of feature matrices maybe I'd know if that does what I need.

Unless you're running an Active Directory domain, more than likely. And really, this isn't that confusing.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/compare-editions/...

I realise this is new news, But any hope for students outside the US?

Really enjoying W7.RC at the moment, Would be great on my budget to be able to do it this way.

The site FAQ says that they're going to make the offer available in other countries as well.

It appears to be an upgrade version for $30.

I don't get that from the site:

http://drh.img.digitalriver.com/store/mswpus/ContentTheme/pb...

I could be wrong though.

They do tell you to run the upgrade checker to insure that your computer will handle Windows 7.

It's possible they're being intentionally misleading about it.

Top left of the image says "Upgrade":

http://drh.img.digitalriver.com/DRHM/Storefront/Site/mswpus/...

I'm still not 100% sure though. It's very confusing.

I would assume that it would spell it out in the first section of the eula by appending an upgrade:

Program Description: Eligible students are allowed to purchase one license of the product below:

1. Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium

OR

2. Microsoft® Windows 7 Professional

This makes it even less clear for me because it appears you can use the upgrade version on a clean system:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Installing-and-r...

I have a Mac. So can i install the Windows 7 Upgrade? Does "Upgrade" means that i need to have a windows in order to install it ? or it doesn't matter?

Kids: Never trust the guy who offers you free candy.

overpriced