If you weren’t able to get a copy of Vista from the party, Foothill College is part of the MSDN Academic Alliance program which means you can get a basically free ($5 for administration costs) copy of Vista if you take any one of their CTIS classes.
The CTIS classes at Foothill are amazing, I’d recommend taking one of Mike Murphy’s classes. He was my first computer science teacher and makes even the most tedious topics seem fun and exciting. The CCNA 1 class in particular is great for anyone who wants to get an overview of networking; you cover an incredible amount of material, the labs are fun and extremely fitting to the curriculum, and overall it’s just a great class. There’s, also, a variety of classes relating to administration (of both Microsoft and Linux servers), programming languages, and security. The spring quarter doesn’t start until April 9th so there’s still plenty of time.
