Microsoft Philippines has a promo for the students and faculty of my college department, the Electrical and Electronics Department at U.P. Diliman, wherein they can get free licensed copies of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Visual Studio, and Expression Studio. All they need to do is go give blank CDs/DVDs to the Engineering Student Council office together with a photocopy of their Form 5 (registration form). The optical media will be returned with installer burned into them and presumably with a license sticker for the OS.

This promo is dubbed the EEEnstallFest and is the joint project of the Microsoft Student Partners in U.P. and the EEE Representatives of the Engineering Student Council. The project’s name is just part of the cliché of substituting an ‘i’ with ‘EEE’ in activities in my department. (For another example, see the photo showing the “BondEEEng” party banner in a previous post.)

My initial reaction to this promo was your usual anti-Microsoft reaction. It stands to reason that this is a PR move to bring up the image of Microsoft to EEE people. I also think that by letting the students use Microsoft products for free, they would be encouraged to patronize Windows when they enter the corporate world. (Then again, it’s Microsoft Office that people really want, not Windows.) It’s a known “fact” that the piracy of Windows is one major reason why Microsoft has a near monopoly in the desktop OS market, though Microsoft would not admit that of course. So by providing a sort of “amnesty” to students that might or have already pirated Windows, Microsoft is possibly acknowledging this effect.

Then again, this could simply and primarily be a PR move like the time Microsoft gave prominent bloggers Acer Ferrari laptops with Windows Vista pre-installed. (Unfortunately, that PR move ended in a scandal.) Microsoft might want to build up buzz, though I can’t see how since I don’t think their target market (the EEE students and faculty) is into blogging or online citizen journalism. Well, the fact that I’m blogging about it means that I’m inadvertently helping to spread the buzz.

Well, if I were still an EEE student, I wouldn’t hesitate in partaking of this offer and get myself a free XP license. I pretty much like Windows XP. Also, if the EEE students are entrepreneurial, they can probably sell this opportunity to people who want to get Microsoft licenses, especially if these students don’t have computers of their own. (I’m assuming that these licenses are transferable.)

I’d like to hear what you think of this promo. I’m sure there are plenty of things to discuss about this offer.