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Further comment on how Microsoft stupidly plunged ahead with their Vista bloatware in spite of clear indication that the market didn't want it. MS intentionally ignored the under-$1000 small computer market, even though they were warned explicitly, by their own in-house marketing people, over two years ago.

From this CRN Channel Media article Analyst Warned Microsoft About Vista, Low-Cost PCs:

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)'s announcement Thursday that it will extend the availability of Windows XP Home for ultra-low-cost PCs (ULCPCs) to June 30, 2010 might have come as some small solace to Gregg Daugherty.
Daugherty is the in-house market analyst who in early 2006 warned Microsoft's Windows Vista marketing team that the new operating system's "harsher" hardware requirements didn't make a lot of sense in a market that was skewing rapidly towards ultra-low-cost mobile PCs.
Thursday's extension makes Windows XP Home available for Microsoft OEM partners to pre-install a full two years after XP Professional is discontinued. The move is seen as an effort by the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant to stave off Linux in ULCPCs, but also as an admission of sorts that Vista's pricey system requirements aren't well suited to the growing ULCPC market segment.
Daugherty's warnings and the extent to which they apparently fell on deaf ears are part of a large collection of internal Microsoft e-mails that were unsealed by a U.S. district court judge in the ongoing Vista Capable class-action suit in Seattle.

The article quotes from Microsoft internal docs that indicate that they intended to force-feed Vista Home Basic (the totally brain-damaged version) to anybody with a small computer. Maybe if they were lucky they could run Vista Home Premium.

Instead, of course, the market spoke loud and clear: "We don't want your stinking, bloated Vista with its extra DRM, WGA, limitations and restrictions, and high cost -- especially on our new smaller notebooks."

Frankly, XP Home is a fine product for these small machines -- for people who want to run Windows, that is -- and although I expect Linux will gain a foothold, I expect that XP will do better.

What's futile is hoping that Vista will ever suitably address the small computer market. Microsoft missed the boat on that growing market, because of their stupidity and arrogance. Pure and simple. They screwed the pooch on this one.