@MasterPlanSoftware said:
So what? People see a cheap laptop and buy it. How many of those people were thoroughly pissed off when they later found out it was Linux and couldn't run the software they already had around the house? Or the software they bought off the shelf at walmart?
Do you know someone like that or are you just speculating? Because the same people might have been pissed of when they learned that the EeePC comes without a CD-ROM drive. Or the screen resolution is too small for many programs. BTW, the Eee-PC is not just a cheap notebook. It's very tiny and nobody would confuse it with a real notebook.
XP runs quite well on crappier machines. Especially if you do the same tweaking you would need to do to a Linux distro like Ubuntu.
Sure it does, but what would you gain? It won't run your games. Installing any off-the-shelf software requires an additional investment for a external CD-Rom drive. Because of the screen resulution, you either have to install a driver that demagnifies a larger virtual resultion to the device's 800x480, which slows down the system and blurs the display, or you won't be able to reach the OK button in many dialog boxes.