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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.

> My point was if they kill off XP what will they offer to run on these smaller laptops? ... 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.

I don't dispute that Linux has the ability to be pared down much farther than Windows. Though I'm sure you have a typo there... 2MB (I presume you mean disk space) is not enough to hold any Linux install that can be reasonably used by a typical home user. I would believe 20MB, as I did an embedded Linux controller for a product a few years ago that ran about 30MB and we had a few extra functions.

Anyway, they're not going to kill off XP in practice -- they just want to make it harder to choose. They'll keep trying, but Vista is such a resource pig that they will lose an increasing share of the low-end market if they don't address it with something people want.

There is actually a quite usable Linux that does fit in memory sizes such as 2MB ... embedded Linux in cell phones.

The Motorola RAZR²
is an example of an
advanced embedded system
using embedded Linux

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_Linux:

Embedded Linux has been ported to a variety of processors not suited for use as the processor of desktop or server computers.

It is an alternative to the -- usually proprietary -- bespoke assembler or C software largely used in embedded development. Advantages compared to other embedded operating systems include: the source code can be modified and redistributed; relatively small footprint (a typical installation may require less than two megabytes of memory); no royalty or licensing costs; mature and stable; and a large support base. Embedded Linux systems combine the Linux kernel with a small set of free software utilities. The glibc is often replaced as the C standard library by less resource-consuming alternatives such as dietlibc, uClibc or Newlib.