Time to call the ACCC over Microsoft

Asus is going to be selling their EeePC with XP for less than the Linux version and then top to if all off, they will only being selling the Linux version in computer stores and not mainstream retailers.

Asus are citing their relationship with Microsoft, and the Linux version does have a 20 Gb drive over the XP version which has a 12 Gb drive.

Sounding like some coercive use of market power, I'll be interested so see if the ACCC investigates.

Still it's nice to see that the potential botnet slaves will have less harddisk space to play with than the linux versions.

At the end of the day, the reality is most people use a web browser and email for most of their daily tasks. Firefox shits all over IE7 and desktop applications are becoming limited to very very specific tasks.

Given the stupid extortion that internet access is today in Australia, people aren't going to be surfing on their EeePC on the train, especially in Melbourne, because the trains are so crowded!

Talking about uncompetetive things, I like the sounds coming from the Rudd Government about splitting Telstra. The new Trade Practices act provisions are going to be moving from the requirement of proving intent to hurt a competitor to the more common requirement of showing that market power has been abused and harm has occurred.

I believe there is also a provision which allows the ACCC to ask the court to force a company to divest (split) a company which has engaged in such activities.

IAMNAL ( I am not a lawyer ) but when i heard this, I immediately thought of the case where telstra was selling land lines for less than the wholesale price for other teleco's.

Life is better under Kevin!

That said we all know how the baby bell debacle turned out in the states.