it's not cheating, but it feels like it

As they say, if it's too good to be true, it usually is. Which is why when I stumbled upon this article on the Sydney Morning Herald, I was sceptical at first. It reports that Microsoft was selling their latest Office 2007 for only $75. That's right, $75! Surely this has to be a scam concocted by some dodgy businessmen trying to make a quick buck, like Billy Gates, or Stevie Jobs.

But looking further into the website, it looked more and more convincing, despite the American wannabe version of Borat from the 50s on its main page and beyond. It turns out that this was indeed a Microsoft promotion. Every Australian university student with an university email address can buy Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for $75 (unlimited licence) or for $25 (for a 1 year licence). You download a trial version from the website and when you purchase the real thing, they send you a legitimate Product Key via email. The trail version is then converted to the real version.

Without seeing the harm in installing the trial version on my office computer, that is exactly what I did. Limited to 25 "launches" I was hooked by the new spunkie user interface after the first launch of Word 2007. Without further ado, I went on and gave them my credit card details and within minutes, I was sent my Product Key. For those mathematicians out there, I just got a discount of 93.5%.

Seeing as this would most likely be the version of Office I'll be using to write that PhD thesis, I really do believe I got a bargain. Now if only they would do the same for Windows Vista...