Eh, seeing as I can get a 7 product key (of any breed) for mere pocket change (seriously, $0.99!), I'm gonna skip the idea of getting one from a school.
Professional is the best in terms of features for the price, you say? I'll probably go with that, then. The only real difference I can find between Pro and Ultimate is that Ultimate has multiple language options (useless to me since I don't speak anything but English) and BitLocker, which I guarantee you I'll never use. Then again, if I can get Ultimate for $0.99, what's stopping me? You know, aside from the fact that I have no clue how they perform relative to one another. Honestly, though, I think the main reason I want Ultimate is that I'd like to say I have 7
Ultimate as my OS instead of 7
Professional or 7
Home Premium. "Ultimate" just sounds cooler than either of those.
I've decided I'm gonna go with
this Asus monitor. 1920 x 1080 for the price of a 1680 x 1050, plus it's one of the highest-rated monitors on Newegg! The price went up by $10 recently, though. Grr.
As for the hard drive, it had better reviews than the Seagate, plus I've heard nothing but good stuff about WD and the Caviar Black series. As much as I'd like a speedy HDD, for the increased performance, it's not worth the price, plus the only Raptor drives I can find are something like 320GB.
Also, I ordered a tool kit for putting my PC together when the time comes, along with some fan filtration accessories to keep dust out of my desktop, since my room gets crazy dusty really quickly and I want to keep it out of my computer. Newegg as usual performed well in their task and I got my tool kit three days after I ordered it. FrozenCPU, from whom I bought some anodized aluminum filters for the 120mm front fans on my Antec Nine Hundred, was just as quick, though my delivery was delayed by a day due to President's Day. Same story with Filtalert, who I bought some foam filter material and software from. Kudos all around!