"As some reader responses to Lyman's post suggest,
supply-and-demand issues aren't the only possible explanation.
Hardware OEMs, for obvious reasons, keep mum about the arrangements
they make with Microsoft to procure volume-priced copies of Windows
XP (Vista is a non-issue here, since it won't run on netbooks and
never will).
"And clearly, if Microsoft considers the Linux netbook market a
significant threat, it will respond by offering OEMs equally
significant incentives to flood their distribution channels with
Windows netbooks."