Here it provides free Microsoft software for all university students. Each university has its own MSDNAA site.
From MSDNAA you can download all Microsoft products including those that are not in stores yet as well as the most expensive programs that are available only for bigger companies or IT developers. You get a license key and can use it for as long as you're a student for your studies (basically everything except commercial purposes).
Go to google and type: MSDNAA + name of your university. Most universities that have their own IT department probably have it.
Back to Windows 7 - I'm incredibly surprised how it works on my 1,7ghz Pentium M + 1gb ram laptop.. and it actually works faster than XP! 40 second boot time + better memory management meaning that it uses more Ram but thanks to that everything works faster. In case any app needs more memory it releases some working on only ~250mb of ram which is just a bit more than XP.
Windows 7 is really the most awesome operating system right now.
The only bad thing is that some single older programs actually have problems and generate errors and that's probably the only thing people dislike about it. There is a simple solution.
You have to run the Windows XP virtual machine that works only if you have more than 1gb of ram and then you have a little Windows Xp inside of your Win 7 so you can run anything like it would run on XP.
Here's how it works:
Windows Virtual PC: Get Started