I know, that title joke was horrible! I spent ages trying to think of one and had to settle on that.

Stick to your seats with joy, my friends! With the release of Windows 7 fast approaching, Microsoft inevitably has to think of a way to make the young, hip people buy Windows 7 to contend with Apple and their overpriced Macs (say nothing Louis). Much as Apple sold their Snow Leopard upgrades for $30 in the US, Microsoft are offering a student discount to University (though methinks the offer will work if you’re at college or possibly even school) students of a pre-order Windows 7 (no word on which version as of yet but as I expect Home Premium) for £30.

I will avoid making any more jokes about the discount saving money for students to spend on alcohol (true though it may be) but it’s undoubtedly some sort of lean towards that. This does, to me, seem to be a badly-disguised ploy at grabbing the student market by the scruff of their blazers (I have some outdated views of students – which is bad considering I’m 18 and about to start uni) and gaining back the market share that has been damaged by Macs being the cool computer of choice (despite being overpriced and underspecced, once again say nothing Louis) for the young folk. Plus, given the amount of Mac users who upgraded to Snow Leopard for the low price should justify Microsoft giving a chunk of their users the same privilege (though I daresay the offer should be more widely extended but they are a business after all). Another plus, by making special offers to students, Microsoft can make a blind stab at trying to shake off the stuffy, boring business-man image that was put on them both by Bill Gates and by Apple in those godawful but oddly hilarious ‘Buy a Mac’ adverts. Behold…(ok, this is a parody but it’s still good)…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrpS9m2VF1c&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00]

Details on the offer are relatively thin on the ground, but we do know that instead of shipping a CD to students, people who pre-order with this discount, which is available from the 30th September for a limited time (but rumoured to end around January), will have to download the new installation (presumably in the form of an ISO file like the Release Client install) and install it from there, suggesting a little dollop of technical know-how is required, but (thankfully for me) not a tremendous amount.

For me it’s the perfect offer (assuming it is Home Premium) and, if it’s possible, I’ll most likely buy a spare copy (given that the non-offer version is more than twice that cost) in case I need it, assuming you can purchase/download multiple copies. However, I have installed the Release Client (and, I should note, barely used it), but this will start to introduce bi-hourly shutdowns and (I assume) eventually stop running altogether so if I want to get off Vista quickly, which I partially do but I can live with Vista, and want to save Sambuca money then this is perfect!

The only problem I can see is that I’ll have to buy a new Genuine version of Microsoft Office because I can’t see any other way of moving it between OS’ (I want a clean install when I get 7). This isn’t a problem for most of my software because it’s almost entirely open-source stuff, but Office I prefer over free options. I may wait for Microsoft Office 2010, which is apparentely about to be released in public beta and I can buy on a Student discount as well, meaning if I avoid the spare Windows 7 I can afford it easily. If the supposedly free Office 2010 web apps are decent then I may be able to ignore Office altogether.

Instead of working through the book-list I set myself at the beginning of the summer, I keep buying new books and saying I’ll read them quickly before getting on with my list. Thus far, diversions such as ‘Brighton Rock’ and ‘The God Delusion’ have kept me a might distracted, and my latest addition ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald will distract me more from the next book on my list ‘The Eye in the Door’ by Pat Barker (a continuation of her fictionalized account of real-life war poets novel ‘Regeneration’). However, Gatsby is only around 150 pages so I’m hoping to power through it quickly, like I did with Animal Farm, and continue. I’ve still not read any more of that T.S. Eliot collection because I just can’t get my head around it.