So recently I've been looking into peramanent solutions to an OS for my old laptop. Right now I'm running the Windows 7 RC, but it's gonna expire eventually. I was looking into buying Windows 7 with a student discount and I ran across this program that microsoft is doing. It allows people attending colleges to download developer software free and legally from Microsoft. Many of these programs aren't of much use to me since I'm not a developer but they have Windows Server 2003 and 2008 on there, which can be used a workstation OS's with a few tweaks.
https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx
So if any of you are in need of a copy of windows, check this out!