Netbooks, in a variety of applications, are certainly among my favorites. After all, they’re cheap, they do most of what we need them to do, they fit well in backpacks, they’re cheap, and, oh yeah, they’re cheap.

Bill Gates will not like this — it's the "other" version of Windows — and it's free. An unexpected cat fight is about to happen in the tech world. You've got this huge guy — Bill Gates — who for years has dominated the face of computers with his Windows operating system.

The dream of cheap computers in the hands of millions of poor children is becoming a reality, though not exactly as its proponents imagined. For-profit competitors snatched the idea and have run with it.

Bill Gates welcomed the world to a new breed of "kinder capitalism" at Davos this week. Conveniently forgetting his past, Mr. Gates declared:
"We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well."

How a Computer for the Poor Got Stomped by Tech Giants. In 2005, Nicholas Negroponte unveiled an idea for bridging the technology divide between rich nations and the developing world. It was captivating in its utter simplicity: design a $100 laptop and, within four years, get it into the hands of up to 150 million of the world's poorest schoolchildren.

"I think this is a question worth asking. Although this links to an article in French, you’ll probably get the idea: Bill Gates is visiting my beautiful city, Paris, just like many other well-known figures the U.S have brought to the world, such as Britney Spears, Georges W. Bush and Mr Potato. The major difference with them is that Bill Gates did not have to avoid mobs of curious people or fans (although I think Mr Potato managed to spend some time pretty much anonymously ).

Microsoft may be able to brow-beat the world into using Vista on fully functional PCs, but if they walk away from XP on simple, cheap computers and cede the market to Linux, they are a dead man walking.

Yes, Microsoft is demanding — and in many cases, receiving royalties — from companies selling devices that run Android, an operating system based on Linux. This shows that its place in the world remains complicated. Though it’s moving to the web, it is still very much a company that makes money selling software — and it still has an interest in protecting this business.

Question: Asus makes an innovative cheap little Linux computer that takes the world by storm but decides to fix what isn't broken and make it more expensive, why? The power of Microsoft of course! And so yet another attempt by a Linux purveyor to carve a niche in mainstream consumer computing looks set to fall to Windows. Or will it?