Watch a few online vids, get a free copy of Vista or Office
By Cyrus Farivar 
posted November 29th 2006 11:58AM
posted November 29th 2006 11:58AM
Want a free and legal copy of Windows Vista, but don't mind jumping through a few hoops to get it? This just sounds too good to be true: get a free copy of Vista Business or Office 2007 Pro just for watching a couple of Microsoft propaganda videos. Apparently Microsoft is either feeling really generous, or doesn't think that people are going to fork over the few hundred bucks to get a copy of Vista before building a little viral buzz, but either way apparently all you've got to do is register at Power Together, and "participate in at least three (3) qualifying web casts and/or virtual lab sessions within 30 days of registration," and then, 6-8 weeks after that, you'll apparently get a real, licensed DVD in the mail. Yeah, we were skeptical too, but then we saw a post on Microsoft's own Channel 9 blog by Mark Brown, a Microsoft developer and platform marketing employee, who confirms that this odd website is his doing. Still, we'll reserve full-blown belief until we see some sort of real documentation that someone actually received a DVD after having watched these vids. And even then we'll probably hold out until Vista Ultimate goes up on the block.[Via Robert McLaws]
Read - Power Together
Read - Mark Brown
Update: We've got confirmation from another source inside Microsoft that this is, in fact, the real deal. He also told us that the number of copies of software that Microsoft has available for this offer is in the "five-digit range" (that's somewhere from 10,000 - 100,000).
They're saying "Our left hand doesn't know what our right one is doing."
Microsoft is a massive corporation; it's probable that low-level CSRs don't know anything about this program yet. This has been confirmed to be absolutely legit in several different ways. Don't worry about it.
Well I guess this is all moot. They are sold out today. (sigh)
Got mine today!
http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/834/ab605a29a4d5qt6.jpg
IT WORKS! My DVD came today whooo... time to back-up my hard drive and whatnot.
Same here, it's running great! I was surprised to see when windows media player introduced sharing. I had opened wmp on my computer and my friend came in from down the hall (I live in a dorm) and said that he could see my computer and now I can get to his music. Also, the best thing about Business edition that I love is the backup feature. That was the first thing I did after I installed all of my programs.
I watched the videos, and I got the software in the mail today. Cool.
averageidea.com
I got mine in the mail a couple of days ago. I was skeptical at first since I actually watched about 5 videos and didn't get any word. Then, a couple weeks ago, Microsoft sent me an e-mail saying that my copy of Vista Business will be sent out in about 5-6 weeks. I then get it 2 weeks early.
I reformatted my PM 2GHz (2GB ram, 256MB Nvidia GeForce Go 6800 Ultra PciE) notebook and have everything up and running. The installation took about half the time it took to reformat my hard drive and install Windows XP Pro. I was lucky enough that my notebook could handle the Aero interface.
After watching a few insightful webcasts I received and installed Office Professional 2007.
Tremendous thanks to Mark Brown at Microsoft & Engadget for the information.
wow, mine just arrived today. Nice surprise!
Awe, I just barely heard this on CNET & they are out? I couldn't even find the link to attempt to get a copy...