[goldstategop]

I see this move by Microsoft as an attempt to get into the same market that Lindows is now grabbing a share of --- the low end consumer market served by Walmart. Bill Gates is going mano a mano with Michael Robertson. Whoever can grab the low cost computer share will emerge victorious in the Operating System Wars. Microsoft/FIC vs Lindows/Micron; its hard to see Redmond lining up with a hardware company to woo the Walmart masses if Lindows weren't the newest kid on the block.

[dr_who]

I see this move by Microsoft as an attempt to get into the same market that Lindows is now grabbing a share of

I see this move by Microsoft as an attempt to keep the market going. As for Lindows, if they actually have a product at this point, much less something that could compete with GEOs, OS/2 Warp, BeOS, AmigaOS, or all those freeware Unix clones, I'd be surprised.

--- the low end consumer market served by Walmart.

Need to locate and visit a Walmart one day and check them out. The fact that anyone would go to a Walmart to buy a computer takes some getting used to. But I like the concept of cheap computers.

Bill Gates is going mano a mano with Michael Robertson. Whoever can grab the low cost computer share will emerge victorious in the Operating System Wars. Microsoft/FIC vs Lindows/Micron

My bet would have to be on Microsoft. Sorry.

; its hard to see Redmond lining up with a hardware company to woo the Walmart masses if Lindows weren't the newest kid on the block.

Hardware can be dirt cheap. Even if Microsoft buys poorly designed extra cheapo hardware from some other manufacturer and slaps the Microsoft label on it. Come to think of it, they probably already do that with other things that they sell.

[The_Reader_David]

I see this as a move to counter the little-observed change in the competitive environment produced by Apple basing Mac OS X on a Unix core. MS realizes that this changes the applications development environment: there are now two software worlds Windows and Unix/OS X/Linux. MS is facing competition from Linux in the Intel-chip hardware universe, but this chould be brushed off as insignificant, were it not for the fact that the same applications development done for Unix will now will minimal effort also be applications development for Macs, Solaris work-stations, and Unix main-frames. Stepping into the hardware business is a move to provide themselves with the vertical-integration advantage which has kept Apple in business (and holding 5-7% of the PC market, and that mostly at the high-end) despite assaults by MS, and the perpetual dire predictions of Apple's demise. Admittedly it is an oblique move to counter the threat. A direct one is quite impossible, though: no Mac user would load a Motorola-processor version of Windows as their primary operating system, nor would Unix-using computer geeks switch (I speak as both).