Never used unix based systems, but I found that Win XP runs too slow on my ASUS EEE 1000h, so I tried Ubuntu EEE. It is much faster, easier to use on small screen and it does the job great!

Dunno why most of people would want to overpay for windows on netbooks?

MSI released the wind with poor wireless drivers and very little optimization. It was pretty much a stock install of openSUSE. No specially optimized kernel compile, unreliable open source drivers and the like. Choosing proper software for your computers is vital to customer satisfaction. The wind was a very small segment, and their 4 to 1 claim was disputed by every manufacturer. This fact doesn't stop microsoft, the fanbois and the blogger crowd from constantly repeating it.
It reminds me of when lenovo blamed the linux community for not writing better drivers for its computers.

What about us that bought our netbooks with XP but run Linux on them now?

On another note. I think Microsoft needs to realize that XP is still a profitable OS, and that they should jump at the chance to continue selling it.

I'm having second thoughts about the whole "Microsoft doesn't care about anything than money" mindset. If Microsoft cared more about their profits, they wouldn't complain about continuing demand for a still-profitable OS.

The linux community is in fear of this return problem. And, yes, they did return Linux machines 4 times more. It's not a myth, but reality that they just don't want to deal with. This is why Linux still fails today.

They do not return them - true, coz they install winxp there.

The real story: How many of those Linux machines are still running Linux.

To bad MS is wrong on there part as Dell is also wrong with it's stats. The netbook wasn't return as much because they got reinstall with XP by most people. You could by the netbook for $100 less than the one already installed with XP. Course I'm going to buy the linux ver than just dual boot or do a full install of xp. All in all both side win. Don't say the linux netbook ver had less mem to run xp, there are plenty of lite ver of xp going around made by self proclaim linux user....hahaha

I agree with the author. But I had bought an early acer with Linux and it was fast.
Acer made a big mistake by not including codecs for mp3 and other media.There where links to buy them. There are free codecs and links should have provided to them if they could not have been installed because of license problems. Most people dont know squat about there computers much less what a codec is. I dumped vista on my dell xps m1530 and am using Ubuntu 9.04 and love it.If oem's are going to put Linux on thier netbooks they must be complete.

I believe this urban myth was caused by the Acer Aspire One which came with 512MB for the Linux version and 1GB for the Windows version. Upgrading the Linux version to 1GB (or 1.5GB) required disassembling the whole computer to access the spare SODIMM slot. So because the Linux version came with less memory, more people wanted to upgrade the memory, and more were returned when people realised how hard it was to upgrade the memory, or broke the machine taking it apart.

The statistic may have been true but be sure you understand the cause and effect.