Recently Best Buy posted a price for the upcoming Windows XP Eee PC on their website. The price is $399, the same as an Eee PC with Linux and the same hardware. What is wrong with that? Lots! You can read my full post on this subject for more details, but the very short summary of what is wrong with pricing the Windows Eee PC the same as the Linux one is that either Asus or Microsoft is absorbing the cost of Windows. If Asus is absorbing the cost, it is not their business to determine the pricing of other operating systems or if Microsoft is pressuring Asus to absorb the cost, that is almost certainly anti-competitive,  and if Microsoft is absorbing the cost itself, that too is almost certainly anti-competitive. (Not that I am a lawyer.)

So basically, if the otherwise identical Windows version and Linux version cost the same, I will be furious and you will almost certainly be seeing more about it here in the future.

You may be wondering why I am not already furious. After all, hasn’t Best Buy confirmed the price is the same? (Best Buy’s page for the Windows version, Linux version) The reason is that I do not trust the numbers on the Best Buy site for two reasons.

First, the picture on the Windows page shows the Linux interface and the Linux page shows a blue screen of death. (Really just a blue screen without the death part.) Second, and much less significantly, the Linux version has an offer for a deal to save $10 on Norton 360, a security product for Windows.

For these two reasons, it is possibly nothing more than a mistake made by Best Buy. So until the pricing is confirmed, I will withold judgment.

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