Hi Kevin,
I'm here in Harrisburg & I know the trade show deal you're talking about. Yes it's for real, it's from some liquidator and it's exactly the same as the regular price copy you can get on the web. And it's not an Academic version, just a true blue deal. One of my coworkers found it back in October & bought himself a personal copy, and since then several other developers in my company (both in PA and other states) called the liquidator and ordered one for themselves. You should get it while it lasts, in October they only had like 50 copies. HTH