Microsoft has finally discontinued licensing for their seminal Windows 3.x platform. Believe it or not, consumers have still been snapping up licenses for the system. It’s used primarily in cash registers and with airline entertainment companies. Still, after 18 years, Microsoft decided to call it quits.

Requirements for the, now dead, OS included a 8086/8088 processor with a clock speed of 10MHz, 7MB of storage and 640KB of RAM. To put that in perspective, Vista requires a minimum of a 1GHz processor and 20GB of storage.

Jerry Shen, CEO of ASUS, noted recently that his company would release an Eee PC priced at US$200 in 2009. He also noted to a group of analysts that the 7- and 8.9 inch Eee PCs would be discontinued to make room for the 10-inch model. Shen did not clarify as to whether or not that meant the 10-inch Eee PC would be $200. He also gave the group some figures, noting that 70% of all Eee PCs now come loaded with Windows XP and hard disk drives compared to 30% that come loaded with Linux and SSDs.

This would be filed squarely in the "duh" department if we were talking about sugar, the stuff that makes candy taste so good. However, we are talking about the Linux-based Sugar UI. That probably wouldn’t make candy taste so good. We could try though.

An editor at Cnet gave his 8 year old daughter the choice between an OLPC XO laptop running Windows XP and one running the Sugar UI. She chose Sugar. Ok, this isn’t exactly the scientific method but the Sugar interface certainly makes more sense than that dreary ’ole XP interface.

Speaking of, Amazon’s "Give One, Get One" program will be limited to the Linux UI. So that works out, considering the kiddies like it so much.

In other news, kids prefer cute puppies to poisonous spiders.

Chinese computer users are appalled at Microsoft’s latest efforts to combat software piracy. A majority of Chinese computer users run some form of an illegal version of the Windows operating system. The latest initiative renders the screen of illegal copies of windows black every hour.

Chinese users are appalled at Microsoft’s efforts because of the inconvenience that it causes them. They argue that they are forced into piracy because of the outrageous cost of genuine windows copies.

Why not blame the Chinese government instead of Microsoft for not being able to afford Windows with the outrageously low wages that result from an authoritative government?

The MSI Wind U120 was always supposed to drop this quarter, now magazine DigiTimes has narrowed the launch to November. The unit will be available in white or black, and should cost approximately $552 when it comes out. November’s Wind will come with a built-in 3.5G data module, Atom N270 proc, 1GB memory and a 120GB hard disk loaded with Windows XP.

But enough of the near future, what about the sorta near future? MSI says a next generation Wind will drop in March of 2009. This version will possess "new innovations" and will be shown off at CeBIT 2009. I hope these new innovations involve it cooking and feeding me a fried egg breakfast. Here’s to hoping.

Click the link to read the original DigiTimes article on the matter.