Pug: I would personally never, ever, ever do a dashboard deal. It would require you giving Microsoft your credit card. I made that mistake once back when it was slightly easier to remove the CC & auto renewal from my account. Nowadays it's a giant hasslehoff that IIRC requires nothing less than calling them on the phone.
The best deal was a few weeks ago when buy.com/eBay had a combo pack of 12months, headset, chatpad, and 240msp for $42.99. I doubt we'll see anything like that again for a while, possibly ever. $40 for just the year is usually a good deal, $30 used to be the jump-on-it price, but those days seem to be over with the price increase.
Since you need to renew now then $49 isn't the worst, but next year don't wait until the last minute and you're bound to find a better deal.