I can't believe I am saying this but...

Well done that Frenchman!

I hope and pray that this gets the crowbar under the edge of the Micro$oft control of hardware vendors where their volume license rebates depend on the proportion of WinDOS they ship, this is why so many vendors have to charge more for a box without OS or with a free OS such as Linux, every non MS box they ship hits their rebates more than the cost of OEM Windows.

If they think that OEMs should only pay $30 for a copy of XP / Vista then that is what it is worth, add $10 for a retail box, not $170.

Don't get me wrong, I am no Linux fanboy, I am using WinDOS XP here connected to Windows 2003 servers, I just want to see Microsoft have to cope with competition on a slightly more level basis. Whenever the Redmond dominance has been challenged (Netscape etc) they have pulled their fingers out and improved their product to compete, that is good for everybody.