[Mike0001]

Microsoft is to offer heavy discounts on the price of Windows XP to low-cost laptop makers, as it aims to see off the threat of Linux in the budget market. Ultra low-budget laptops such as the Eee PC have traditionally shipped with Linux distributions in an attempt to keep a lid on costs.

However, in recent months Microsoft has stepped up its efforts to have Windows used on such machines, striking deals with Eee PC maker Asus and the OLPC project.

Now the company is prepared to offer all low-cost laptop makers a discount on the Windows XP Home licence. Microsoft will charge PC manufacturers $26 (£13) to have Windows XP Home preloaded on low-cost machines sold in emergingmarkets and $32 (£16) for those sold in developed markets, according to documents seen by the US magazine, PC World. And manufacturers could get as much as $10 more off of those prices if they are eligible for Microsoft's market development scheme, potentially reducing the price of the XP licence to as little as a few pounds.



Full article here.

[Dave Hybrid]

I thought the whole selling point of an EEE PC was it's size, not cost.

And if makers start reducing the size of the machines to more EEE standards then the specs won't run XP anyway.

[Mike0001]

I think Microsoft's tack is to get people to buy Windoze because they know it already. That way the sales of Linux versions will suffer. (Stifle it before it becomes an avalanche, to mix metaphors!)

I agree, if they can get XP to run on that spec then why have they forced the rest of us to upgrade to supercomputers?

[philthomas]

I wouldn't be surprised to see "Micro Vista" appearing in a shop near you very soon

[Mike0001]

Originally Posted by philthomas I wouldn't be surprised to see "Micro Vista" appearing in a shop near you very soon

Pocked Vista for your PDA and even a version on phones?

Heck, my Toshiba TV runs on Linux, why not Vista on TVs too? Let's slow the whole world down!

Vista for watches? Ummmm....

[Spencer2004]

i thought that microsoft woz trying to kill off win xp anyway? well i suppose they would rather promote their old os rather than their shiny new expensive instead of allowing linux to win.

[serverguy]

I would never have bought the XP Eee.

I think a Linux distro is perfect for this sort of use. Quick booting, no virus problems, simple.

But a lot of people still want XP, for one reason or another.

I don't think it is going to kill the Linux market yet.

And they are also shooting themselves in the foot by saying that any notebook running XP like the Eee is not allowed to have a screen larger than 10 inches and it cannot be a touchscreen. The hard drive must also be less than 80GB.

[philthomas]

Yep ..... and no more than a gig of Ram and you have to stand on one leg and hum dixie

[Mike0001]

It really is bizarre! Almost like getting rid of 10% tax and then jumping through hoops to produce a result equivalent to...10% tax. They get rid of XP and then say, OK, you can have it, but we are really truly getting rid of it, it's just that for a certain class of machines we aren't!

Everyone knows what a small footprint XP has!

[serverguy]

Well, I have definitely changed my mind on this.

My Eee came with the default Xandros Linux which I liked to begin with.

But, I found it really didn't suit me very well. It was too simple in simple mode and it was just too much effort trying to use the simple linux in an advanced way.

I found Xandros (default OS) to be very slow performance wise, which was strange as Linux normally runs much faster than XP.

I remembered how annoying I find OpenOffice. Actually, I had got used to it but then Spell Check completely died and I had no way of re enabling it short of a complete format. I also needed .docx support as that is what school use and I didn't like having to convert everything to .doc

The networking support was pants. I don't know what Asus did to it but it was not working well and I was forever trying to trouble shoot it. Others seem to have this problem as well.

So, I decided I would try and install Ubuntu. Gave up on that 5 minutes after I got it on there because the are no drivers for the wireless card which makes it effectively useless.

So then, I decided I would go with XP.

After about a day of trying to get it to install by USB I finally got it on there and am now very happy with it.

It boots really fast (thanks to nLite), is really stable and fast, and integrates with the rest of my network better.

Overall, I find the Eee much more useful with XP. I will leave Linux to running servers