You can get 180 day trials of most MS stuff if you buy the MSpress books to study with. Ive got a few of them that havent been opened coz i just use the real discs from the action pack.
Actually I had a copy of XP running on my PC, my Dad's PC, my friends PC, and then another friend's PC, and whoever else my friend shared a copy of the XP CD too...
All Windows does is flash this little "Not genuine" thing and then calls it good. At least this is what I have encountered so far and I've been running this OS for awhile.
but in any case, if you HAVE the funds to get a legal version, then i say get it, if not, then pirate it. As the Romanian President said, "Piracy built this country".