They'll figure out how to put XP Home on it. The machine is actually quite capable, despite its size and cost limits.
Vista, no way. XP Pro in an office environment? Of course not. But for an ultra-portable browser/email machine? ideal!!
Microsoft HAD to allow XP to live for this, otherwise this would have been Linux's first huge strike against them in the consumer market.
I run XP on my Thinkpad PIII-500 with 192MB of RAM with no problem. My point was if they kill off XP what will they offer to run on these smaller laptops? The trend supports small lightly used laptops like the eee-PC. Are they betting on the processing power of them to be increased in the next few years, because I doubt that. Eventually as they(Intel and VIA) reach the 2GHZ mark on these processors the heat and energy will be to great. Unless they will come out with multi core processors for this type of computing. So I still think Linux will rule this roost in the long. Linux can be very small, like 2MB small if necessary. Windows can’t even get below 2GB today.
Glad to see XP sticking around, especially if still being sold OEM, but they should have woke up DOS/9x and open-sourced it for these things to get an open community started...