This is really a sign a company is in trouble and has some major leadership issues. When the company is too embarrassed to mention their own specific brand in a major press release.

Like I mentioned before, the stockholders and investors are going to be demanding some answers and possibly some changes too.

Microsoft Surface would be great for Netbooks, considering I really hate laptop keyboards.
Oh, wait, Surface is a bloated pig that's bigger than the tiny Netbooks...

Aren't these devices expanding the PC, and hence, Windows market? Granted MS has a Vista PR problem. But having new opportunities to sell your product doesn't sound like such a bad thing to me. Besides, MS can have its PR department spin the whole Windows Vista / XP situation (through lots of TV and other ads), and come out looking pretty good if it really wanted.

These machines are expanding the PC market, but they're not expanding the Windows market--instead, they're expanding the market for OSes other than Windows.

Also, Microsoft has had to severely slash its prices for XP in order to stay competitive in this market. But that's essentially giving away its family jewels--after all, what would Microsoft be without fat profit margins? That's the essence of its business model.

Joe, so what you are basically saying here is, that MS is going to put XP Home on "Nettop Devices," because Vi$ta/Seven won't work well or possibly at all on these? So you do mean another place where XP has to save Microsoft itself from its "flagship product, Vista." And I thought Vista was supposed to be such a great OS, LOL. Guess it won't run on a lot of hardware, or do anything that XP could not with a few freeware apps throw in.

Vista=no value over XP. And certainly cannot compare with the value of a nix OS. Still Vista has the malware problems of Windows, plus the DRM. The DRM alone makes Vista the worst OS compared to XP, as XP has less than Vista.

Why would anyone want to take your dumb 30 day challege? I had a Vista machine for a week while custermer was on vacation, in for wiping the hard drive to XP and used it, what a pain. Vista comes in the door often with malware to be cleaned off. Cannot see any value in Vista. It will be a cold day when they pry my downloaded copy of GNU/Linux out of my computer and try to replace it with Vi$ta. And whats all this fawning over Bill Gates? Please, let the fat cat retire.

The bottom line is that Windows will have the leading market share in the Nettop/Netbook niche. For Microsoft, a Windows sale is money in the bank and market share gained, regardless of the version of Windows that is being sold.

First MS had to extend XP home for the certain class of laptop, and now the "nettops," or certain class of desktop computers.

What happens when an OEM gets brilliant enough to figure out that the laptops in this certain configuration out to have 15" or 17" displays? And do it because the competition is not, because MS decided they could only but XP Home onto 10.4" or less notebook lcd's. There will be a market for these types of laptops, and with Linux on them.

MS reminds me of the little kid with his finger in the dike, before the dike gives way.

Acer Bets Big on Linux

http://www.osnews.com/comments/19827

Quotes; "Acer has already started selling Linux in its Media PC business but this should now spread, according to Gianpiero Morbello, vice president of marketing and brand at Acer. "We have shifted towards Linux because of Microsoft," he said."
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Some of you may remember the President of Acer saying how disappointed the whole industry was with Vi$ta. Now this maybe just a bargaining chip to employ with MS, but who knows. The fact is, that sooner or later, selling XP Home for cheap on better and better laptops, even those with better and bigger LCD's, and faster CPU's, is going cut into MS profit. As MS will have to sell XP on these to compete instead of Vista. Or else, somebody like Acer and Dell, will figure out the cost savings of putting Linux on these.

By the way, OEM's should just start putting the OS, either MS or Linux on hard drives, so when u buy a laptop, you can get the OS of your choice, with the cost savings, by getting a preinstalled hard drive for it, off the self with the OS already installed. This would foster choice and free market competition, and be a boon to OEM's.

I don't know why MS couldn't have tweaked Vista to run on much lower powered machines. They needed to make a Vista LE (Lite Edition?), with substantially lower system requirements. Vista was built on the Windows Server 2003 kernel and could be tweaked to run on similar hardware. That could have allowed a version of Vista to run on these Nettops and Netbooks. Why didn't MS attempt this? Two possible reasons: 1. They already have too many versions of Vista and their would have been backlash because of it. 2. Development time and money. Perhaps MS would rather spend their resources on Seven (7).

The best thing MS could do with Seven (7) is to sell it as one version and componentize it. Take the idea in Server 2008 and expand on it. This could simplify the SKU and allow Vista to run lite on small devices or with all the bells and whistles on high-end desktops.

Have you seen the many stories and performance tests that show how Server 2008 is faster and more stable than Vista even with SP1? Part of that is that even if you get the GUI in 2008 identical to Vista, there are still many background applets/services that automatically run in Vista and are turned off in 2008. Another is there is not the same DRM in 2008 as Vista.

There is a small group of users who are running Server 2008 as their desktop OS. I used it for several months back when it was beta/rc. It worked extremely well and noticeably faster than Vista. It just that to purchase the RTM is cost prohibitive. And if it doesn't have DRM, then MS doesn't want end users to have it anyway.

@ Tom Berber :

"I don't know why MS couldn't have tweaked Vista to run on much lower powered machines. They needed to make a Vista LE (Lite Edition?), with substantially lower system requirements. Vista was built on the Windows Server 2003 kernel and could be tweaked to run on similar hardware."
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There is a very simple reason that MS could not do this. The heart of Vista problems are the DRM that is even embedded into the kernel level. While you are entirely correct that 2003 server kernel was the basis for Vista and 2008 kernel, the 2003 kernel did not contain the massive DRM in it that Vista does. Not to mention, things like protected pipeline video being embedded, checking about 60 times per milli-second the devices/device drivers/parts of the Operating systems/and the kernel, to make sure nothing has been hacked, is what makes Vista a slow bloated buggie OS.

Now supposed MS made that Lite version of Vista, for these laptops? They would have to strip out the DRM. If they used the same kernel, without the DRM, it would make it so easy to hack out the DRM on other versions of Vista. And this folks, MS cannot allow, as they made their deal with Hollywood.

So chips...

That makes sense. It is a shame though, that Windows users (whether by choice or no choice), have to pay a performance hit (a huge one) because of this DRM B.S. You know, if the entertainment industry would sell their product at a reasonable price, they would sell multiple times as many copies and there would be no business for piracy.

I'd like to run WS2008 for my desktop OS, but it is totally cost-prohibitive. I enjoyed the evaluation of Beta 3 and the RC's. I was able to make the GUI identical to Vista, but it still ran faster and more stable, even compared to Vista with SP1. I still occasionally get hangs and have to cut the power to get out, as much as with XP. Never once had a hang like that with WS2008. And all my peripherals worked just fine with it, using Vista or XP drivers. So I have to think that WS2008 is Vista SP1 without the aggressive DRM. If Vista were a desktop version of WS2008, it might not have been that bad actually. Maybe better than XP.

I need to find the best Linux distro for me. I need one that makes it easy to find and install additional apps. One that is very media friendly. I like ripping music and movies and watching them with quality apps. I need a good CD/DVD burning app with it. And I like viewing and editing photos with good tools.

@Tom Berber : So I have to think that WS2008 is Vista SP1 without the aggressive DRM.
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Perhaps, I have not evaluated WS2008, because of the cost, and furthermore, do not have any need to do so. Linux is working just fine for me here. Will keep XP around for a legacy app or two.

Chips recommends Mepis 7 or PCLinuxOS which are both KDE GNU/Linux distros. You can get the free download links thru the right hand side menu at distrowatch.com Both distro's have synaptic package manager already installed, which is used to install more software. Sometimes, you might have to edit the newer repo's in synaptic to stay up to date, as sometimes the repo addresses change. Those can be found on the forum's for each distro, if needed. DVD:Rip is an excellent program to do what you want to do.

@Tom Berber:
I have had great success with the latest Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long Term Support). I run both the 64-bit and 32-bit versions, and I find that the 32-bit version is pretty much perfect when it comes to playing and ripping video and music. It's rock solid, has a great update mechanism, and makes it smooth and easy to obtain non-free packages, such as video drivers for Compiz, if applicable, and the Adobe flash player plug-in for Firefox.

As Chips said, dvdrip is superb. The VLC and xine applications play more types of audio and video formats than either Windows or Mac. And xine is a really polished video player, having a UI that is very much as polished and cool as PowerDVD on Windows. With VLC, you can even convert among WMV, FLV, OGG, MOV, and with a wide selection of audio and video codecs.

Burning CDs and DVDs is easy with k3b (has a much better interface than most Windows-based utilities including Nero) and an assortment of others.

One big weakness (except for games... for those who care) is video editing. But that's also a weakness on Windows. The best available Windows video editor is Adobe Premier, but that has proven to be a money pit and remains buggy. For video editing, NOTHING is better than iMac and Final Cut Express. Unless you are producing full-length feature films, you'll find that Final Cut Express has everything from its top-of-the-line Final Cut Studio that you'll need for high-end home editing. And you'll find that Final Cut Express on iMac is as solid as a 100-ton block of granite.

But to rip, extract, convert, play, and burn CDs and DVDs, Ubuntu does it all, does it smoothly, and is pretty much all GUI-based.

One exception: To play commercial DVDs, you need to download dvdcss.lib, then run configue; make; sudo make install. But after those 37 seconds are over, VLC and xine automatically recognize the library and you're off and running... er, playing.

However, it's not for everyone. Those who feel pity or guilty remorse that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are only multi-billionaires and feel the need to help make them multi-trillionaires will find that Ubuntu will sorely disappoint their noble and charitable goal.