Its for subnotebooks and the market niche is very real... even with XP home the OS is sluggish hence the linux advantage as OS in terms of performance on intel atom. Google can also bundle applications out of the box, e.g. open office, chrome, etc. The real challenge would be to make these applications easy to setup/use/learn for a user that has already been used to using applications typically bundled with MS. Once the learning curve problem is out of the way then the price advantage of bundling open source OS and applications will reduce microsoft's presence in the subnotebook market. After all... do you really need all the features (and the CPU consumption) of MS products when all you gonna do is surf, chat, blog, write simple docs using your subnotebook?