No, they actually offer a free 120 trial. Then I googled around and found out how to run it inside vmware. Haven't done much aside from that since it really needs a hardware profile, but the generic one will work for now.
What I highly recommend is putting together a project proposal and see if they'll give you an internship. I'll clarify.
I found out the Microsoft recruiter for my university is Kim Bremmer (you can find this out at
http://www.microsoft.com/college/). I didn't get the internship I applied for a while ago; however, when I was last on my let's-get-a-Microsoft-gig hype time, I sent her an e-mail asking, essentially, "If I put a project proposal together for something that would add value to a current Microsoft product, could I get an internship working on that project?" She told me, essentially, "Put the project proposal together and then we'll talk."
That was more work than I had time for at the time, but I am fairly certain that they're not averse to looking into new and creative ways. Their internships have great package benefits, and who knows? You could be building a Microsoft battlebot running XP Embedded, while they're paying you to do something that you wanted to do (basically) anyway. Then you could get parts and stuff for free too, *and* have the advantage of hardware pros like the people at the Xbox 360 division.
Of course, then you trade-off the notion of not being singularly identified with the project. But it's still not a bad gig.
That might be way more in-depth than you had in mind, but it's probably worth considering.