Microsoft confirmed Thursday that it will extend the sales of Windows XP Home to OEMs beyond the current deadline of June 30, 2008, to accommodate a new class of ultra-low-cost PCs (ULCPCs) that are just beginning to pepper the market.

"Microsoft is actually paying for using Windows [...] Asus speaker confirmed this in Germany," says an informant

Mark Shuttleworth claims that Microsoft may be giving Windows away to fight GNU/Linux (on sub-notebooks)

As the release of low-cost laptops based on Intel's upcoming Atom processor draws near, Microsoft is getting boxed into a corner. The software company plans to stop selling most Windows XP licenses after June 30, yet most of these low-cost laptops won't be powerful enough to run Vista when they arrive later this year.

For a fact, Microsoft might soon enter debt and we have been studying for quite some time the true story behind Microsoft’s PR and accounting walls. Not so long ago we returned our attention to the issue of misconduct, including systematic kickbacks. There is more to bribery then just kickbacks, which themselves as a subtle form of bribery more severe than lobbying, which is legalised to a greater or lesser degree.

Using another so-called "promise", Microsoft has just implicitly confirmed that it is on a warpath against people who make money selling Free software

A YEAR ago, ASUS told the press that it was "closely tied up with Microsoft.” This happened just months after ASUS had expressed its future commitment to the GNU/Linux platform and recently we learned that Microsoft probably offered kickbacks to ASUS. It is almost confirmed now. The effect on ASUS appears to be devastating as liaising with Microsoft did not really pay off.

Dell has no intention of selling non-Windows consumer and commodity PCs/Notepads. They simply can’t as the net profit on a Dell system is derived directly from the Windows OS via “Desktop Real Estate” and any Microsoft leads and co-marketing funds [kickbacks] provided — and not from the hardware.

You've got to hand it to Microsoft. It hates ANYTHING and ANYONE that gets in its way of selling its software. Including, apparently, itself. In a very funny turn of events, Microsoft is out preaching to the industry that XP is a bloated expense hog, while svelte Vista will cure world hunger (or, at least, cost less),