Low-cost mobiles get cut-price XP

It's yours for £11.50, says Microsoft – and don't you dare look at Linux

Microsoft is offering big discounts on Windows XP to to pursuade manufacturers of low-cost laptops to its software rather than Linux, according to a US report.

Vendors can get XP for as low as £11.50 in developed economies and around £8.20 in emerging economies such as China and India, says a report in the US magazine PC World (no relation to PCW).

The latest Microsoft products are priced too high for machines such as the Eee PC, which can be bought for as low as £200, and are seen as an opportunity for Linux to break into the mainstream as a general-purpose operating system.

It is no secrect that Microsoft has offered deals to vendors – the upgraded 8.9in Eee PC runs XP – but this is the first time prices have been quoted.

Microsoft, fearful of undercutting the market for more expensive notebooks, has been careful to impose limits on the hardware for vendors to qualify for the new cut-price offers, says PC World.

The US publication quotes documents it claims have been sent to PC manufacturers saying qualifying systems should have no more than 1GB of Ram and a single-core processor clocking no more than 1GHz – though concessions are made for Via's C7-M, which clock up to 1.6GHz, and Intel's yet-to-be-launched Atom N270.