Where to get WinXP cheapest legally

[Crellion101]

I purchased a laptop with a blank HD for college on an online laptop and just recieved it yesterday, I want to know where I can get WinXP Home the cheapest legally. Also am I able to buy OEMs? Where should I get it - Newegg? I checked my school's academic store but they didnt have OEMs nor discounted full-versions of Windows.

 

[duke2106]

I work for a University and our store sells to students for a pretty hefty discount, especially being a member of the MS campus licensing program. Did the campus store absolutely say 'no'?

OEMs can be bought at Newegg, however they have to be bought with hardware that is being used in the computer. Being that you have a laptop, you would probably have to buy a pc card (modem, wireless, ethernet, etc..) along with it.

 

[yelo333]

Academic pricing at newegg seems to be the cheapest. It's certanly the place I would get it if I needed to. you can get winXP pro OEM academic UPGRADE for $84:

you will already need to own Windows 98/98 SE, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 2000 Professional. or Windows XP Home Edition.And, put one of those install disk in during the install(when it tells you too) , to satisy it you own one of these earlier versions

if you don't already own one of those, you might want to buy winME from the hot deals forum, as well:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=40&threadid=1360568&highlight_key=y&keyword1=windows%20ME

that would be a total of $119 for XP Pro. if you wanted to go with XP Home, and get the full version, I'm sure you might be able to do better price-wise than that.

Example:

newegg has XP HOME full for $90:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=37-102-141&DEPA=6

but, IMHO, $30 to upgrade to XP Pro would be worth it.

 

[Crellion101]

Will OEMs install on clean HDs without asking for previous versions of Windows?

 

[yelo333]

Originally posted by: Crellion101
Will OEMs install on clean HDs without asking for previous versions of Windows?

Short-n-simple: YES

The only difference is that they MUST be installed on clean HD's, and won't do upgrades

 

[Tash]

well, the HD doesn't have to clean.

 

[magomago]

Hrmm...do all universities have this program? I go to UCI and I know they give out Visual Studio .NET free to the ICS majors here, but i'm not sure about the others since i'm not an ICS major~

 

[Turkish]

Originally posted by: magomago
Hrmm...do all universities have this program? I go to UCI and I know they give out Visual Studio .NET free to the ICS majors here, but i'm not sure about the others since i'm not an ICS major~

Well, you may not get it for free but it will be cheaper than retail.

 

[oupei]

don't know about you but here a GA Tech, enrolling in any CS or EE/CompE class will get you into the MSDN Academic Alliance program which distributes, among other things, windows xp pro for free.

 

[MtnMan]

Any other schools, community colleges around. I teach at a community college, and scholastic discounted software is available at our bookstore. And since you are a college student, it's all legal

 

[Sianath]

Every school has the option available, but not all choose to do it.

 

[Fern]

Maybe check-out this site. Cheap OEM software. I noticed them while googling around. Says $50 for win XP pro 2002

 

[MGMorden]

Check around. I've graduated now (since December), but when I was at Clemson we had all sorts of discounted software at the student bookstore (I got an academic copy of Borland C++ Builder 5.0 for $12, and Borland Delphi for $8 :Q). However, given that I was in the Computer Science dept., I could get any software I wanted for free (some campus agreement with MSDN. I'm guessing they were just trying to get the upcoming students more used to MS stuff b/c our department ran all Solaris machines). Anyways, MS Windows XP Pro. Visual Studio.NET, whatever. All of it was free. Might want to check into some stuff like that.

And if worse comes to worse Linux is always available .

Of course, I'm personally starting to become interested in SkyOS. It's starting to look VERY nice. It is closed source and it isn't free , but if it turns out decent then $30 is well worth it for a good OS.

 

[Sondra]

Fern's suggested website looks like a pirate site...and the shipment from Eastern Europe doesn't inspire confidence.

 

[alrocky]

Originally posted by: Fern
Maybe check-out this site. .... I noticed them while googling around. Says $50 for win XP pro 2002

You might want to delete that link to that site. Looks very similar to sites that have have gotten threads locked here. As Sondra says, it's most likely a pirate site.

 

[MDE]

Check your school bookstore. I got a full copy of XP Pro and Office 2003 Pro for $20 each at my school.