As demonstrated by the current price for a Dell Inspiron Mini 9, netbook prices are falling very quickly and they started out cheap from the beginning. These price drops are largely driven by improvements in hardware that make the hardware components cheaper, rather than the software getting less expensive, though. This trend poses a problem for Microsoft...

Accepting the money from Microsoft would, in itself, do not harm. But Microsoft typically demands a price for its sponsorship, a price that implies a change in the nature of the event. The price might be, let someone from Microsoft give a speech. The price might be, don’t say that proprietary software is evil. The price might be, present Microsoft sponsorship in a way that inhibits
you from denouncing Microsoft’s software as unethical.

Netbooks are a new category of laptop computer, defined mostly by their small size and cheap price. The category started only a year ago and has evolved drastically since. I tried the first netbook, an Asus Eee PC with a 7-inch screen and didn't like it; the keyboard and screen were much too small.

With Microsoft trying to horn in on this one laptop per child program I can see two things happening. One I already mentioned and that is the price will rise. Not just because of the operating system that Microsoft seems intent on forcing on everyone but the cost of the hardware will rise too as windows will not run on hardware that Linux can happily run on.

Yahoo has finally offloaded its open source enterprise e-mail division, Zimbra, to VMware. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the sales price is believed to be far less than the US$350 million Yahoo paid for the company in September 2007. Kara Swisher at Boomtown reported that the sales price was "well below" the acquisition price, but didn't specify an amount.

Shuttleworth once told The Reg he can't wait for Windows 7 on this sub-laptop class of machines because it'll finally give Ubuntu the opportunity to compete fairly against Microsoft's operating system in this emerging market.

In Part One of my Eee PC series I looked at the hardware specifications of this miniature marvel. In such a small space Asus have managed to cram in a lot and at a price that is so low that it ought be illegal. However, it is a cliche to recall that hardware without software is junk—unless you have a fetish for silicon. In this post I will look at the software on the Eee PC.

Boingboing is reporting that Microsoft is forcing OEMs into using artificially low hardware specifications. Even if you erroneously believe that OLPC is simply a matter of price tag, Microsoft's actions are puzzling, to say the least. Well, as long as you imagine that Microsoft is in it for the kids.

Dell has cut $50 off the price of PCs with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled rather than Windows Vista.