Microsoft DreamSpark

Wow, Microsoft is giving away Software to students for free.
Over at https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/ you can get:

• Visual Studio 2008 Pro (and 2005 Pro if you want)
  
• Windows Server 2003 Standard
• SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
• Expression Studio
• XNA Gamestudio 2.0
• Virtual PC
• all of the Express Edition (Visual C# 2005 Express, VB, Vis J# 05, Vis C++ 05, …)

You have to sign in with an windows live account, tell them what university you're attending and they'll verify. After that, the downloading can begin.
This software is available to people within the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium.
So people without an MSDNAA Account are also able to get something.
Giving away software or free is a pretty nice thing to do. Seems as if the OSX/Linux competition has stepped up.
At least Windows Server 2003 can be transformed into a nice workstation (I think there were even guides on howto transform it into a PC for gaming).