Buy a Windows 7 PC Get a Free Xbox 360

Video game hardware developer and software giant Microsoft has announced that those students who satisfy a set of conditions and purchase a Windows 7-powered PC that is worth more than 699 dollars will be able to get a free Xbox 360 S home gaming console with a 4GB hard drive.

The console is now worth about 200 dollars on the open market.

The offer starts on May 22 and will go on until September 3 and Microsoft says that it will be available at a number of online retailers like HP.com and Dell.com.

The Microsoft Store is also open for those who want to take advantage of the Combo offer for Windows 7 and Xbox 360.

Other retailers like Best Buy are also involved in the program.

At the moment the offer is only available in the United States, but it seems that there are talks about now expanding it to Canada and France and other countries might also get access to it before the end of the summer.

Those who plan to make the purchase online will need to have an email address that ends in .edu while those who buy in brick and mortar stores will need to show a student identification card.

The Microsoft offer marries two of its best-performing divisions, the PC-oriented and the gaming-focused ones, and aims both to create a bigger install base for the Xbox 360 and to get more users running Windows 7.

The operating system has been launched in late 2009 and has since then widely adopted by the corporate medium while the home users have often stuck to their older versions.

For the last few months, the Xbox 360 home console has performed very well on the United States market, managing to be the best-selling piece of gaming hardware, beating both the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Nintendo Wii.