Microsoft is offering a new edition of Windows Embedded Standard 2009 as a free download, in a move designed to address the needs of hobbyist and academic users. The Windows Embedded Standard 2009 Academic SKU went gold the past week, with the Redmond company announcing that the bits would become available through the MSDN Academic Alliance (MSDNAA) program. MSDNAA is, at this point in time, the sole distributing channel for the Academic edition of Windows Embedded Standard 2009, which comes with an expiration date of no less than a year.

“I am very pleased to share the news – the Academic SKU of Windows Embedded Standard 2009 is RTM’ed! With the exception of the changes required to adjust the timebomb, this version is binary identical to the rest of the Windows Embedded Standard 2009 Evaluation version, the database has all the same components and the tools are the same too. They will soon be available on MSDNAA for download,” Weijuan Shi, program manager of the Embedded Windows Customer Strike Team, revealed.

Microsoft released Windows Embedded Standard 2009 to manufacturing in October 2008, and subsequently started serving a 120-day trial version of the operating system as a free download. The successor of Windows XP Embedded, Windows Embedded Standard 2009 continues to be based on the XP codebase, an aspect that will change only with the next iteration of Windows Embedded, which will have Windows 7 at its foundation.

Weijuan Shi explained that time and resource constraints meant that Microsoft was unable to synchronize the releases of the Standard and Academic SKUs of Windows Embedded Standard 2009. This is why the company opted to push the RTM and availability dates of the Academic edition into 2009.

“Several designing options, with factors such as engineering cost, marketing cost etc., were evaluated. At the end, the team came to an agreement on what to implement: extend the current expiration date from 120 days to one year for academic users only. That should meet the needs of most academic users. I was very happy to see the buy-off from the whole team, both the engineering side and the marketing side,” Weijuan Shi added.

The 120-day Evaluation Edition of Windows Embedded Standard 2009 is available for download here.