I tried it out today. Wow, it's beautiful and fast. Seriously impressive from a technical perspective. Could defintely make mobile a more viable access point for SL users. And beyond simply viable, I can imagine new ideas for expanding SL's functionality on mobile devices to make it even more engaging (e.g., tying in GPS data, augmented reality using mobile device camera, etc.) As for the pricing... The entire game industry has come to the conclusion that the future belongs to freemium, free-to-play, and pay-once-play-forever. Metered usage? The 1990's are on the phone and they want their business model back. SL Go is a great idea that will die in the nest if it doesn't move to a modern-day pricing model.

Educators finalize and submit their budget requests in July-August. By now, the funds have been allocated. Which means there's no way for them to pull additional funds out of their pockets between now and Dec 31st to pay for more months of tier. If Linden Lab had done some elementary research on the budgetary cycles of academics, they would know this. To be completely honest, this "offer" doesn't offer much of anything to most educators.