Windows 7 $30 for students in US

[SyntherAugustus]

http://www.win741.com/

[AveryMaurice]

BlackFish said:

http://www.win741.com/

I get it for free. X D

[DuckReconMajor]

I got Adobe CS4 Web Premium for $250 XD

[Csonicgo]

Holy Jesus yes.

[exp(x)]

My school's engineering department provides MSDN access.

[Reisal]

$119 isn't THAT bad for a brand new retail box OS..

[Kirby]

avery1555 said:

I get it for free. X D

[myk]

More like "Forum Microsoft Spammer".

[Bucket]

Ah, crap. I was supposed to go to some seminar for a free copy. Oh well, I'm sure there would've been more strings attached and I should just buy retail anyway.

[Csonicgo]

myk said:

More like "Forum Microsoft Spammer".

You're welcome to use Windows 7.0 with the rest of us.

[Aliotroph?]

Bucket said:

Ah, crap. I was supposed to go to some seminar for a free copy. Oh well, I'm sure there would've been more strings attached and I should just buy retail anyway.

I did one of those seminars for a free copy of Visual Studio .NET 2002 (the first one). Four hours of listening to market speak and crappy programming demos. Getting the free software was nice. It even came with a book and I got free dinner. The only strings on the software (in addition to all the regular stuff MS makes up) were I couldn't use it for commercial development.

I get Windows 7, Visual Studio 2008 and Visio free from my current school. :)

[Maes]

Aliotroph? said:

The only strings on the software (in addition to all the regular stuff MS makes up) were I couldn't use it for commercial development.

Like they can tell.

[Sporku]

Ooh, cool. Even better than the $50 preorders Amazon was doing a while back. I suppose I'll cancel one of my copies and just order one of these instead.

[myk]

Csonicgo said:
You're welcome to use Windows 7.0 with the rest of us.

Yeah, I'll do that right after I finish typing my WAL-MART SAVINGS thread!

[Quasar]

I wonder if I can use my seven-year-old OSU student id to get in on this :P

[Shaikoten]

So I'm still pretty content with WinXP and don't really feel any particular need to upgrade, but for those of you who are familiar with Windows 7: is it better or worse for DOS games, backwards compatibility, etc?

[Jimmy]

Favoriting this. :P Gonna check it out in more depth at a later date, once I get a bit more clarification with my school about its email address, domain join, etc.

EDIT: Bah.

Individual must be a student at a U.S. educational institution

:(

[Maes]

Shaikoten said:

Windows 7: is it better or worse for DOS games, backwards compatibility, etc?

WinXP's compatibility is pretty poor to begin with. Vista's worse, and 7's isn't likely to get any better. WinXP can dramatically improve by using VDMSound (running stuff faster than DOSBox), but that's also not a silver bullet, as lots of stuff won't work anyway.

Your best chance is still DOSBox, especially in Vista/7.

[Shaikoten]

Honestly DOSBox is fantastic and all, but the holy grail for me is System Shock 2 compatibility. I want to run a LAN of that really bad without people crashing like crazy.

[DooMAD]

Shaikoten said:

So I'm still pretty content with WinXP and don't really feel any particular need to upgrade, but for those of you who are familiar with Windows 7: is it better or worse for DOS games, backwards compatibility, etc?

I'm guessing worse. Couldn't get C&C Red Alert to run under 7, but works fine in XP.

[Maes]

DooMAD said:

I'm guessing worse. Couldn't get C&C Red Alert to run under 7, but works fine in XP.

C&C Red Alert however also came in a Windows flavour, so in the end it would boil down to WIndows 95 compatibility, rather than DOS, as was typical with many "DOS" games released after 1996.

I don't understand your concern with System Shock 2: it's a pure Windows game, so DOS and DOSBox has really nothing to do with it.

Ironically, those games designed to run with Windows 9x often give more trouble than DOS titles: with DOS, you acknowledge you're on another era and fire up an emulator. With "native" titles such as SS2 however, it's a mixed blessing: some may work right away with NT/2000/XP/Vista, but some won't.

At that point, there's either a compat. patch or hack, or you're just screwed. If it really doesn't run in XP/Vista/7, then maybe you'd be better off setting a Windows 98 box (unless you think VMWare could hack it, heh ).

In your particular case however, you are lucky. Just realize that it's a Windows game patched to run in newer versions of Windows, not a DOS one.

[Aliotroph?]

System Shock 2 is a nasty game to run on modern computers. The engine freaks out when it encounters a multi-core CPU so you have to set the affinity to one core. Then the sound code has all kinds of issues with some Vista drivers and you end up needing to change obscure settings to get it working. Awesome game, though.

I don't want new OSes having lots of compatibility for ancient software. It always gets implemented with weird hacks. Emulation and virtual machines ftw!

[Sporku]

For some reason I was able to get System Shock 2 running under Windows 7 without really doing anything. The only thing I remember having to do was install a bunch of really old unsupported video codecs so that the videos would play properly. Oh, and I'm running a Core 2 Duo on Windows 7 x64 right now.

[Sharessa]

I hope this offer will still be around whenever I get a chance to go back to college.

[Maes]

Danarchy said:

I hope this offer will still be around whenever I get a chance to go back to college.

You mean, after you regain your scholarship money that your parents "accidentally" spent? :-p