I don't think people should have any difficulty getting WinXP on machines, though. I know the three systems I bought in the past month have WinXP Pro x 2 and WinXP Pro 64-bit on them, easily available with a simple chat with the saleman.

Yeah, we bought 2 thinkpads within the last 3 months with warty XP, but are happier with them than we would have been with the flimsy macbooks.

also you can backgrade with Mac. Maybe the issue is that the actual new models from all vendors do not offer anything new. Now I want to get my hands on the new laptop of the One Laptop per Child program, because I think it can be a great computer not only for kids in developing countries.

Easy solution - buy the components and put the computer together yourself, then you get absolutely zero stuff you don't want.

Unfortunately the DIY approach isn't practical for laptops, which most of us probably use. And I expect Dell et al make large margins on the process of getting a robot arm to put a motherboard in a case, turn a few screws and shove some sub-standard over-sold components into the PCI slots, so they wouldn't be too happy if everyone went all independent on them either.