Microsoft has an obsession with providing awesome deals for students. They also have a slight tendency to shoot themselves in the feet. This is a good amount of both, and thankfully (if you’re a student), it’s in your favor.

Microsoft created the DreamSpark program to give such awesome tools as Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 Professional Edition free to budding Computer Science and Information Technology students with a Windows Live ID. Now, here’s where the fun begins:

Sometime last year, Microsoft added Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition R2 licenses to the DreamSpark program. Even later, they added Windows Server 2008 x86 Standard Edition licenses. Coupled with Vijayshinva Karnure’s step-by-step guide to converting Windows Server 2008 into the ultimate desktop OS published in February of ‘08 on his MSDN blog, the non-technical masses now have themselves a fully functional, relatively-easy-to-configure OS that’s more powerful and more advanced than Windows Vista. Granted, “easy to configure” doesn’t mean “easier to configure than Windows Vista,” nor do you get to have the Windows Media Center, but there’s sadly always a price to pay for FREE. Given a choice between Windows Vista SP1 upgrade for ~65 dollars and Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition for free, which would you choose?

As for the steps provided, I’m not sure if the academic license of Windows Server 2008 allows for Hyper-V, so if you don’t care for Hyper-V support (as instructed in Vijayshinva’s post) or for running any virtual PCs, you can skip steps 1 and 10 on the guide.

The next question: Does Microsoft even support converting the server OS into a workstation/desktop OS? Yep, and not just because of Vijayshinva’s post, but that alone would be a justification for the following reason:

All opinions posted here are those of the author and are in no way intended to represent those of his employer. All posts are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

-Every MSDN, Technet, and other individual Microsoft employee blog.

Microsoft doesn’t endorse the opinions of its employees, but Microsoft does fully endorse any factual matters being discussed regarding its products, including step-by-step guides, support… anything of a non-opinionated nature which doesn’t involve compromising its products (like hex edits). Is this a technical loophole? Sure, but there’s a second, much better reason for Microsoft to support converting Windows Server 2008 into a desktop operating system: The “Desktop Experience” feature.

The Desktop Experience feature was added to Windows Server 2008 in part because of the absurdly high number of requests Microsoft received from small businesses running a server as someone’s desktop machine (plausible in smaller networks where extra server hardware would be cost-prohibitive). The process for turning Windows Server 2003 into a more desktop-worthy operating system was a bit of a pain, so the desktop experience feature was simply intended to make it a bit easier to implement this usage scenario. It’s fully supported by Microsoft.

Now here’s where the DreamSpark deal beats The Ultimate Steal: unlike The Ultimate Steal (which is limited to university students), high school students can also take advantage of DreamSpark. So, if you’re a student at just about any university or high school, go ahead and nab yourself a copy and save 65 dollars. This is probably the only thing available on DreamSpark which is highly relevant to people who aren’t developers.

(If Microsoft decides to take down the steps, which I highly doubt, you can catch the full instructions on converting Windows Server 2008 from a barebones server operating system to a desktop operating system after the break.)

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