No one claims that netbooks can match the performance of laptops that cost hundreds or even thousands more. The real question is whether the performance of a netbook is good enough.

In open source or in product development generally, one of the biggest mistakes is to take on a deeply entrenched incumbent on its own turf. Almost inevitably, if you play someone else's game, even if you're a little cheaper/faster/better, you're going to lose.

This week I'll be at InterOp Las Vegas looking for the latest and coolest Linux-based technologies that InterOp exhibitors have to offer. My favorites are certainly the "new innovators."

The number of phones shipped using Google's Android platform is set to grow much faster than the iPhone this year, estimates from Strategy Analytics maintain today. Devices like the T-Mobile G1 have just a small fraction of shipments today but are expected to grow 900 percent in 2009 as multiple extra smartphones launch and more carriers come onboard.

Even when Dell just offered Ubuntu 8.04 on all of their systems, I suggested that it would make sense to update to the latest version. I checked their ever-changing selection of Ubuntu computers again, only to discover that the Ubuntu versions make even less sense.

Some good news from OLPC: we've decided to base the new XO-1.5 laptop's software release on Fedora 11. Unlike previous releases, we plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead.

Recently, fellow Computerworld blogger, Preston Gralla wrote about a Lenovo analyst who felt that Windows 7 will dominate netbooks, and Linux will fade away. Of course, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols responded that Linux does have a future on netbooks