Like many companies in the IT industry, netbooks snuck up on Microsoft surprisingly quickly. But once Microsoft realized that these cheap, small form factor notebook PCs were shipping with Linux and getting the open source OS in front of more consumers, the software giant moved quickly to extend the availability of Windows XP for these machines to June 30, 2010.
The netbook segment is growing quickly, and looks poised to continue being part of many cash-strapped PC buyers' decisions in 2009. That's probably the reason Microsoft decided that getting some money from XP on netbooks (which is reportedly cheaper than the regular PC version of XP) is better than getting nothing from Linux-based ones.
