It’s not piracy! At least this is the message accompanying the dead cheap Windows 7 editions offered by Microsoft to students in the UK. Microsoft has already confirmed that it will be offering Windows 7 for as little as £29.99 to students in the UK in mid-September 2009. The special offering has now been included into the Ultimate Steal, an initiative designed initially to offer Office 2007 at a considerable discount to students. Via Ultimate Steal, UK students with a valid university email address will be able to buy Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional editions for just £30.

“We launched the Ultimate Steal offer of Office Ultimate 2007 for £38.95 - only available to students and staff with a .ac.uk email address. And this year, it will stay available permanently, not as a short-term offer,” revealed Ray Fleming, UK Education Industry Manager for Microsoft. “But what was even better is that our friends on HMS Windows also set sail on a Windows 7 offer for staff and students, with a special price of £29.99 until the end of December."

Microsoft is essentially offering the upgrade flavors of the Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional SKUs, and not the full retail editions. This means that UK students looking to take advantage of this special offering via the Ultimate Steal initiative also need to own a genuine copy of Windows Vista or Windows XP from which they can upgrade to Windows 7. Students in the United States have a similar offer available, namely Windows 7 for $30. Eligible students in the US need to visit www.Win741.com, in order to take advantage of the offer.

“We’d hatched a brilliant plan to launch our Ultimate Steal offer on the International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Which is why we went with a nice Piratey theme for the launch. Oh, how we were going to laugh – with plenty of piratey jokes, piratey blog posts and other such sea-shanty-silliness,” Fleming added. “But ‘twas all blown to smithereens when ITLAP day was a Saturday. “Shiver me timbers!” said the crew of the vessel HMS Office, “We can’t be launching a campaign on the high seas on a Saturday.” And no amount of treasure could change their course. And so it quietly slipped out of port on the 17th September instead, and sailed into the wide blue yonder.”