Microsoft To Offer Students Free Xbox 360 With Windows 7 PC Purchase

Microsoft today announced it will start offering a free, 4 GB Xbox 360 S -- a roughly $200 value -- to qualifying students who purchase a Windows 7 PC for $699 or more over the summer. The offer, which runs from May 22 through September 3, can be redeemed at online retailers including Dell.com, and HP.com, as well as brick-and-mortar Best Buy locations and both online and retail Microsoft Store locations, according to a Microsoft Windows Team blog post. Online purchasers need a .edu e-mail address to confirm their student status, while retail customers can show a student ID. The deal only applies to the U.S. for now, but will be coming to France and Canada soon, according to Microsoft. While Windows operating systems still run on 85 to 90 percent of all computers, according to various reports, that market share has come down by a few percentage points in recent years thanks to increased popularity of Apple's Macintosh computers. The Xbox 360, meanwhile, has seen system sales heat up over the past year, leading overall new monthly hardware sales in the U.S. for ten of the last twelve months. Late last year, Microsoft tried to entice customers to buy a smartphone on the Windows Phone 7 by offering a free Xbox 360 game along with the purchase.