Microsoft fears Linux. They don't want to see an under-spec'ed option on an already under-spec'ed laptop with "Windows only" next to it, it makes the Linux one look like the more attractive option. Serves them well, being the all-controlling tyrants they are.

It's so friggin' retarded...

Come on Microsoft up the ram limit to 2GB.

I'd rather not pay for ram thats going to be swapped out, even if the stores offer the upgrade for slightly cheaper than the ram cost.

I'm just not interested in having massive storage capacity on what should be a low-cost system to sling in a bag every day. A cheap low capacity SSD is all that is needed.

Then again my needs clearly aren't the needs of the masses, who seem to need to carry all their media around on every bit of electronics they have at all times!

Acer has already been shipping the Aspire One XP with a 120GB hard disk for several weeks. Either this change predates that, or they were in violation of Microsoft's terms before this new 160GB announcement.

Increasing the capacity limits seems inevitable, it's one of the easy ways for netbook makers to come out with new models or variants and capacity is always increasing. If I were in charge I'd just limit it to a more broad platform and only specify a processor and chipset perhaps to keep it from overlapping with Vista. I don't see why they wouldn't want to sell XP licenses anyway, it's still a license and most of the work is done on it so it seems like their ROI would be high for an XP license.

This seems legally questionable. Their basically telling people what hardware they are allowed to run software on, which is like a publisher only selling books to people who agree to read them using GE lightbulbs from 40-60 watts.

I'm a Linux user myself, Ubuntu 8.1 is coming along nicely by the way, with 3G Auto-Connections.

Noo, please, Microsoft, please keep shooting yourself in the foot. It's all good. We're happy without Windows on our portables.