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Education Microsoft Windows XBox (Games) Games

Microsoft Promo: a PC and Xbox In Every Dorm Room 219

Posted by Soulskill from the and-a-free-pack-of-heroin-with-every-windows-phone dept.
theodp writes "Can Microsoft woo students into trying Windows 7 PCs? Well, starting on May 22nd, Microsoft will try to do so by giving away free Xbox 360 4GB consoles to high-school or college students who purchase new Windows 7 PCs priced at $699 and up. A Guess Who's Coming to College? teaser video for the promotion features a Halo Spartan's HS graduation ceremony."
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Microsoft Promo: a PC and Xbox In Every Dorm Room More

Microsoft Promo: a PC and Xbox In Every Dorm Room

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  • if you have a PC you don't need a console (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dan667 ( 564390 ) on Saturday May 21, 2011 @12:05PM (#36202626)
    I guess you could sell the xbox and use the money to buy games for the PC.

    • Or sell the XBox and that 600 bucks PC to buy a real one.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by VortexCortex ( 1117377 )

      I guess you could sell the xbox and use the money to buy games for the PC.

      My thoughts exactly... Well, except that I would sell the Xbox for for a RAM upgrade or possibly a few peripherals. Additionally I'd be formatting the drive, installing a VM, then installing Linux and re-installing Win7 (remember to make recovery disks first). IMHO, no one should run Windows outside of a VM. P.S. You can use a Hackintosh VM Image too, if you must, and dual or triple boot instead of a VM if you're brave enough to let MS Windows run directly on the metal -- Yikes!

      If you're going to buy a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        Additionally I'd be formatting the drive, installing a VM, then installing Linux

        If your distribution detects all the hardware, great. But a lot of people who buy a PC and then change out the operating system end up finding out that a piece of hardware connected to the PC is unsupported in the other operating system. When you buy a ready-made winbox, you at least know that it comes with drivers for the included hardware, no HCL checking needed.

        IMHO, no one should run Windows outside of a VM.

        That'll become practical as soon as desktop and laptop computers running something other than Windows or Mac OS X are nationally advertised to th

        • If your distribution detects all the hardware, great. But a lot of people who buy a PC and then change out the operating system end up finding out that a piece of hardware connected to the PC is unsupported in the other operating system. When you buy a ready-made winbox, you at least know that it comes with drivers for the included hardware, no HCL checking needed.

          I have seen many PC's and laptops (HP comes to mind, maybe others as well), where its virtually impossible to install Windows from a stock image. You NEED to use the version they give with the pre loaded drivers.
          And, you wont get drivers for any version of windows other than the one they come with at all.

          Ubunty/Linux Mint however install without any issues

          • I have seen many PC's and laptops (HP comes to mind, maybe others as well), where its virtually impossible to install Windows from a stock image. You NEED to use the version they give with the pre loaded drivers.

            Hardly. When was the last time you used Windows? With Windows Vista/7 As long as your wifi/ethernet card installs, Windows Update takes care of most of the drivers. Anything else can be found on the mfgr website.

            This is hardly the case for Linux. For example, My Envy 14 has 2 graphics cards, one low power integrated Intel and one high power discrete ATI. Windows handles this just fine, but Ubuntu can't run off the dedicated card. This means I can't get any Video out, as that goes through the ATI card. Furth

            • Hardly. When was the last time you used Windows? With Windows Vista/7 As long as your wifi/ethernet card installs, Windows Update takes care of most of the drivers. Anything else can be found on the mfgr website.

              That's been the case for quite a while. Right now it's not much of a problem, but I'm guessing that as Win 7 gets older that it's going to be more and more common for you to need a second driver disk to get the drivers. XP doesn't have much trouble finding drivers at present, provided you've got the ones for your network card.

              But, if you've got drivers for the network card there's absolutely no reason why you can't download the correct drivers yourself.

        • He is saying what he will do. Why are you criticizing him as if he were positing it as a general solution? I'm getting a pool installed. Is that wrong because millions of apartment dwellers can't? I don't get you people that seem to think everybody should be the same.

      • You run games on a VM? How fast is that exactly?

    • I guess you could sell the xbox and use the money to buy games for the PC.

      Provided that the games you want to play are even ported to the PC. The PC is stuck on the old version of Street Fighter IV, while the Xbox 360 has the current version.

      • There are some specific titles that don't get ported and if those are the things that matter to you then sure. However in general there is good cross platform availability. Most games launch at the same time (like, say Brink, or NFS: Shift 2), some take a bit but still come over. Also sometimes the PC gets a better version. Your SF4 example is an interesting one. The Version of SF4 on the PC is larger and more complete than on any of the consoles. Likewise Super Street Fighter 4, which comes out in July, wi

      • What about all the kinect games, those are all exclusive to xbox, and are awesome to play/exercise with.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Dahamma ( 304068 )

      Good luck playing the latest games if you just bought a $700 PC...

  • That was quick (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GrumblyStuff ( 870046 ) on Saturday May 21, 2011 @12:17PM (#36202720)

    Wasn't it just a week ago when the antitrust oversight over MS ended?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hjf ( 703092 )

      Mactard Fanboys: mod me down already and save your time, no need to read the rest.

      God I wish some day Apple will become dominant (or relevant, at least), so you mactards start getting viruses and antitrust lawsuits and whatnot. MAYBE THEN we will see that every company becomes "evil" like Microsoft when it gets the chance.

  • Seriously:
      1) Buy the $699 PC.
      2) Get the free XBox console.
      3) Install Linux on the PC. (Dual-boot so you can hang on to any Windows-only functionality you need for the XBox or on a separate, swappable, hard drive to provide an "airgap firewall" against possible dual-boot cross-OS malware.)
      4) Have fun with Linux.
      5) Goodbye Microsoft profit!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hjf ( 703092 )

      There is a prerequisite: you need to be a smug anti-microsoft linux fanboy first.

    • 3) Install Linux on the PC.

      Not going to happen.

      If you are a gamer on a budget Gog.com has 300 classic DOS and Windows games ready to run under Windows 7, none of them costing more than $10.

      If you have student ID then Windows Academic Professional is $80 direct from Microsoft.com.

      Expect steeply discounted academic upgrades to Windows 7 Pro, etc., as well.

      Expect academic pricing elsewhere for any other must-have software. Expect anything of interest in FOSS to have long since been ported to Windows.

      • If you're a gamer on a budget, or a college student on a budget, why are you buying a $699 PC? Seems awfully pricy, and I'd think if you were going to college, either you've already got a game machine, or you picked a really silly time of your life to buy one. I suppose you could buy the $699 PC-Xbox bundle, sell the Xbox, and end up with a better PC than you might have otherwise bought, but it's still kind of silly.

        Just about everything except games will work fine in a virtual machine, and even many ga

      • Don't forget Microsoft Dreamspark [dreamspark.com] which offers Visual Studio and other developer tools for free for students.

      • Sort of agree. While I've become so used to Linux that I actually feel crippled on Windows, I know that if I spend enough time tinkering with a Windows PC I can get a lot of the same functionality, specially if you are willing to fork some bucks. I know this first hand because I used to customize windows beyond recognition when I was younger.

        And compatibility is supreme. I've had problems, but pretty much everything works. In Linux only FOSS stuff (and some server stuff like ORACLE's) work reliably.

        The thin

      • If you are a gamer on a budget Gog.com has 300 classic DOS and Windows games ready to run under Windows 7, none of them costing more than $10

        http://www.dosbox.com/ [dosbox.com]
        http://www.winehq.org/ [winehq.org]

  • Obviously a respons to the Apple promotion (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Twid ( 67847 ) on Saturday May 21, 2011 @12:21PM (#36202764) Homepage

    Obviously this is a response to Apple's back-to-school promotion, which they have run for several years. Last year that program got you exactly the same amount in credit ($199) towards any iPod when you bought any Apple laptop.

    One advantage of the Apple program is that you could trade up and get a higher priced iPod touch model and still get the $199 in credit. It looks like the Microsoft program only gets you the slightly gimped 4GB Xbox with no trade-up. A lot of students might be bummed when they realize they need a $100 hard drive accessory to play a lot of the games.

    Not a bad deal, but I wonder how many Xboxes will be given to students who were going to buy a laptop anyway. I think the Apple motivation is obvious: to get students to switch to Apple. Not sure if the formula works the same with Microsoft.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      What would be cool if this summer the $199 promo include iPads. This way the college kids could play angry birds during the boring history class.

    • More likely a response to the fact that something like 50-60% of college students are buying Macs for school instead of PCs. Question will be whether or not students are buying the Mac because of the iPod credit or whether it's more some other reason, and whether the free XBox will be enough to reverse that trend.

  • There are 4 ways for something like this to work out financially for MS. 1) Either an Xbox 360's true manufacturing cost in 2011 is a mere 50 - 70 dollars a unit (ageing hardware + economies of scale from manufacturing tens of millions of them). 2) Or people who choose to become "Windows PC users" for the next 5 - 10 years will get shafted out of money so frequently and in so many different little ways that the cost of the free Xbox becomes negligible in the long run. 3) Or the creation cost of 1 unit of a

  • Confused... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by laxguy ( 1179231 ) on Saturday May 21, 2011 @12:49PM (#36202944)
    by these commentors...

    You buy a cheap PC, where Microsoft makes money from the license for Win7, they throw in a CHEAP 360 (basically the Arcade version, which I believe is is like 150-200$). After you've got a nice new free console, what do you do? Buy another controller (money to MS), buy some games (more money), buy xbox live (more money), buy a new hard drive for more space (more money), etc. This isn't desperation at all, this is just another way for Microsoft to make gobs of money. If they had given away an Elite Xbox, then there would be less money re-couped but they would still end up making a profit in the long run.

    This is directed (like they say) at college kids, going to school for the first time and looking for a new computer.. AND A FREE CONSOLE?! HOLY SHIT! That sounds like a great deal to me, now I can go to school and play Xbox with all my friends and I don't have to shell out an extra 200$ for the console!

    I don't understand how people aren't getting this..

    • I don't understand how people aren't getting this..

      It gets better.

      The controllers work on both systems.

      The retailer can point the student buyer or his parents to the dorm-room sized HDTV. The soundbar. The webcam for Skype...

    • People ARE getting this, it's just the Apple fanboys in denial.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by rssrss ( 686344 )

      "I can go to school and play Xbox with all my friends"

      Think of all the money you will save by flunking out in your first semester.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by laxguy ( 1179231 )
        Trying to imply that video games are going to cause kids to fail out of school.. seriously? you're a retard.

  • Do you think that any high-school student receiving a free console will study anything for the next year?

    Of course, you might point out that most of these students already own a console (often a Xbox, too). Then these might be sold on eBay to Taiwanese students, and at least it's worth 40-50 $.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hjf ( 703092 )

      By your logic, we should assume that if they get no xbox they will study EVERYTHING for the next year!

      1) Ban XBOXes
      2) See grades skyrocket
      3) ???
      4) Profit!

  • Second prize, two 360s! The new 360 logo [newstechnica.com].

  • ...a reason to stay up 27 hours straight and play video games instead of studying for final exams. Somehow I doubt the marketing department is going to be cognizant of final exam week across the entire nation when they release the next version of Halo/COD/BF.

    Of course we all know the blatant motivation behind Microsoft doing this, but what exactly is the educational need for an XBox in college? This is a bit different than bundling an MP3 player with a laptop with regards to the distraction factor. Of co

  • I've never commented on the video in the past and I'm already blocked? WTF, does Microsoft hunt down people they think won't agree with them and block them? I guess if you're losing your grip on computing you have to pull out all the stops to make it look like you're still awesome.

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