All colleges and universities assign their current students a personal school e-mail address. Students can use and access their school email anywhere and anytime. But Cerritos College decided to stop providing their cerritos.edu email address to the students, perhaps it is to cut IT costs.
One disadvantage for Cerritos College students not having a college email address is that they can not take advantage of a highly discounted price for Microsoft Office 2007 and the new Microsoft Windows 7 software. If you visit the official Microsoft deal website at http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-us/default.aspx , the Microsoft Office 2007 suite costs only a fraction of the retail price at only $59.99. The Microsoft Windows 7 software costs only $64.95. Both of these prices are for college students only with a valid .edu email address and be enrolled at least 0.5 units.
College students use Microsoft Office 2007 (or 2003 edition) on a daily basis for word processing, checking emails using Outlook, and working on spreadsheets using Excel. Most if not all works are done using the Office software and most likely you want to buy and install Office at your home computer too. Rather than spending couple hundreds of dollars for the Microsoft Office license, students can purchase through the Ultimate Steal promotion and take advantage of the more affordable pricing. And best of all, the license does not expire after you finish school. But you can not transfer or sell the license to anyone else.
You will need to obtain a college email address somehow to make a purchase through the Microsoft Ultimate Steal promotion. Unfortunately Cerritos College students are out of luck and will need to purchase the softwares through the campus bookstore at a higher price (lower than retail price).