Just and update to this story, Microsoft shipped a regular ISO file to those that downloaded the .exe file of the student version.
What do you mean "shipped"? I have not received any email from MS saying that a DVD is being shipped to me, or providing a link to a where I can download the iso. In fact, when I complained to Digital River and demanded my money back (that was before I was able to make the iso and burn an install DVD myself), their solution was to have me pay $13 for the DVD.
BTW, MS tech support is horrendous horrendous horrendous ! All calls are routed to India and the people on the other end are mostly clueless, putting you on hold for 5-10 minutes at a time while they "consult their resources", ie., search the MS Knowledge Base (something I could do just as well, if not better).
Speaking of bugs in Windows 7, I think I ran into one (which is what occasioned the call to MS tech support). I linked my Dell laptop to my company domain, and then decided to unlink it after I started having issues with program installation (
big brother putting limits on what can be installed). After unlinking from the domain and rebooting, my original administrator account became a guest account (WTF!) and the default/built-in administrator account became inaccessible (WTFx2!). They (MS people in India) had me boot in safe mode and create a new administrator account. To my shock and amazement, after rebooting I discovered that my original account (which I spent the better part of the day customizing and setting up for for email, network access etc.) was gone! I finally figured out on my own that the thing to do was to go back to a restore point from the time before I joined the domain. Yikes!
