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It was there, while my kids perused the latest video games, that I learned why Microsoft won this round of the Netbook wars.

And there is no doubt they won it.

There are, at Fry’s, a number of Netbooks on offer, including two that are true Netbooks — no moving parts. Others had 160 GByte hard drives built-in, which I think violates the spirit of the design.

None ran Linux. All ran Windows.

The salesman was a Linux enthusiast, however, and was able to explain just why you can’t get Ubuntu there.

Free is not the lowest possible price. If you want to get sell-through at retail, you have to support the product with collateral materials, with ads, with sales training and support.

Ubuntu, as a company, is not scaled to do this. Microsoft, on the other hand, has already delivered this, for years. Thus the few Netbook units on display run what is now, essentially, the “free” version of Windows, XP Home. Once you get into a true laptop, you’re still stuck with Vista. I avoided that section.