If you are a student (this works for non-students as well but I expect you to be honest ;) ), you can download a whole bunch of software for free. How? Well, all you need is to become an ACM student member, and join the MSDN AA (Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance) ACM Student Benefit Program.
Normally it takes around 19$ for you to become a student member but you can do it for free for a limited time by going to http://campus.acm.org/icpc/
So, the steps to get all these software for free are:
Go to the above mentioned link and sign up for ACM student membership
Once you join, create an ACM web account
Log into My ACM, and then opt into MSDN AA ACM Student Benefit Program (Look for the link: Free Software for ACM Students)
You’ll get an approval email within 24 hours after which you can log on to your MSDN AA account and download your choice of softwares.
The Softwares that you can now download for free through this are:
Windows Vista Windows XP Professional Windows Server 2008 Visual Studio 2008 Professional Visio Professional2007 Office Project Professional 2007 Access 2007 Visual Studio 2005 Team System SQL Server 2005 Expression Studio Sharepoint Designer 2007 Virtual PC 2007 Virtual PC for Mac 7.0.2 Visual C# 2005 Express Edition Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition And much, much more!
Let me know if this helped you out or if you have any other such free deals/tips of your own.