Microsoft claims netbook dominance over Linux

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Microsoft has claimed victory against Linux in the netbook market during the past year.

Figures quoted the growth of Windows on netbook PCs going from under 10 per cent of unit sales in the first half of 2008 to 96 per cent as of February 2009.

This figures come courtesy of Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc, who used the Windows Experience blog to quote US figures from NPD Retail Service Tracker Service data.

LeBlanc claimed that Microsoft had beaten off Linux’s challenge when it came to low-cost netbook PCs, as most people wanted netbooks to work with Windows operating systems.

He also claimed that while people were buying Windows netbooks, they were often returning Linux ones.

Netbook manufacturers MSI and Canonical publicly stated that Linux return rates were four times higher than Windows, according to LeBlanc, who also used the example of Carphone Warehouse dropping Linux-based netbook PCs due to ‘customer confusion’ and a one in five return rate.

'Great' was also the term used to describe how Windows 7 will run on netbooks. "We’ve been testing Windows 7 on netbook PCs since before Windows 7 was feature complete, and our plan is to enable these small notebook PC to run any edition of Windows 7," claimed LeBlanc.

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