This article "By Paul Taylor in Portugal" i wonder what Portugal he's in... "Portugal, you see, is a welfare state, and most public services cost nothing or next to nothing..." nothing can be wronger and far from truth. 

The majority of Portuguese people has to pay and pay almost every public service. Only Corrupt Politicians like Mr Sócrates and his friends from the two major parties like socialist (only in name) party and Social (also only in name) Democrat party, have a status of welfare. This buy was a major propaganda issue. This is an election year and the politic campaign already began. Like they said in ancient rome bread and circus...

"Portugal, you see, is a welfare state, and most public services cost nothing or next to nothing..." 

what a lovely form of foreign sarcasm.

I wonder what the near 50% portuguese think of this, after all, they all have their access to the internet, enjoy their homes, medical care, transportation, education access - subsidized - unfortunately by a huge debt to their bank.

Portugal is such a state of the art in the technology sector, that makes me wonder how pictoresque and 3rd country they still look.

Surely some mistake for MS letting this happen. And those 500,000 are just the start.

What will happen with compatibility if the first batch are Linux and second batch are Windows? What about common software between them?

Just to point out that TMN, PT and Zon are all basically the same company, operating (respectively) in wireless communications (TMN = cellphones), wired telephone (PT = ISDN / landlines) and coax (Zon a.k.a. TVCabo + NetCabo = cable).

There are other (smaller) companies, but the big three are PT (inc. TMN & Zon), Vodafone and Novis (inc. Optimus & Clix).

ISDN costs and speeds in Portugal are pretty decent, but wireless access is overpriced and somehow (cough*cartel*cough) all three companies seem to have nearly identical terms of service and nearly identical prices.