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Office 2007 for free?

There’s an offer from Microsoft to give you Office 2007 for free … naturally there’s the fine print ….

Microsoft is offering free copies of Windows Vista and Office 2007 to people who watch some promotional videos – cool deal but there are the usual catches.

Go over to http://www.powertogether.com/ register then watch online videos about either Vista, Office 2007 or both.

The Office 2007 info and video selection starts at https://osd.powertogether.com/Campaign.aspx

As usual the fine print is important and we don’t expect too many people will get disks in the mail compared with the number of people who complete the online tasks. The promotion only applies to USA residents. If you or your employer is in the Microsoft Partner Program or the Microsoft Developer Network then you’re not eligible.

The offer expires on 28 Feb 2007 however you only have 30 days from the time of registration to complete the online tasks. If you qualify for both Vista and Office 2007 you’ll have to complete a US tax form before getting the second ‘gift’.

Most importantly the offer is ‘while stocks last’ and there’s no indication of what that stock level is. As in previous promotions, this is a sleight-of-hand from Microsoft – the number of ‘gifts’ could be anything from 1 to a million. Who knows?

To see all the conditions go to http://www.powertogether.com/ and click on the ‘Offering Details’ link on the bottom left.

What is fairly certain is that the stocks, whatever level they might be, are probably already exhausted. The site has been slow or stopped, probably due to demand and that’s a good indication that people snapped up whatever was available.

However some of the videos might be of interest, even though they only present the rosy view of Microsoft’s wares. You might want to register and watch the videos for your own edification – just don’t hold out much hope of getting disks in the mail.

Ignore most of the stuff on the home page – the main entry pages are http://vsd.powertogether.com/ for Vista and http://osd.powertogether.com/ for Office 2007.

There are some other Office 2007 related promotions at https://osd.powertogether.com/portal/osd/promotions.aspx which are squarely aimed at developers.

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