Great deal. For $25 + shipping you get a Windows 8 Professional license, Parallels 8, and a USB stick. Just change the "disabled" attribute on the order button, and you're all set.
There's a very strong hint on the site. If you're a developer you should be able to figure it out easily, if you're not a developer you probably won't know how to "remove the disabled attribute" anyway ;)
All it takes is someone to post a few step by step instructions and anyone could re-enable the button regardless of their skills. Hopefully people won't ruin this offer and do that though.
It is easy enough to write a small bookmarklet that anyone can paste into the window to flip off the disabled field. Once that gets into the wild, I can't imagine this offer will last.
Lanthe, how much longer do you intend to keep this running? Because I'm timing out before even hitting the form. Would really love to get this as I've been hoping to get into .NET MVC4 but OEM Win8 pro is quite a lot of money.
The "+ shipping" part amuses me. It seems to sum up the whole "out of touch" reputation that Microsoft has, whether deserved or not. Why wouldn't this just be a download?
Yes, because they're totally charging $25 for a USB stick and throwing in Windows and Parallels for free, and the whole thing would be pointless without the USB stick.
Microsoft isn't being stupid here. The puzzle is a hurdle. The donation and (waiting for) shipping are additional hurdles. Hopefully all of these hurdles filter well for the kind of developer Microsoft want to attract.