We interrupt your regular scheduler to bring you some very important news. From an article published in the Il Sole online newspaper, it appears that Toshiba's Italian channel sales and marketing operation stated that they consider to offer pre-loaded Linux on their Tecra, Satellite, Qosmio and Portege notebook lines.

I don't know what you guys think right now, but I can only think of one thing: Ubuntu on Toshiba notebooks. How that sounds? I'll say after the Dell's decision to ship Ubuntu on their desktops and notebook systems; this will be the smart choice for other big computer manufactures like Toshiba, to make this important step and bring Ubuntu into people' homes.

Toshiba's Italy Computer Systems Division manager, Mr. Luigi Cattaneo, is aware that other big companies like Acer and HP own more than half of the Italian Windows laptop computer market, and the only chance for Toshiba's notebook line to move ahead would be to offer pre-installed Linux as an alternative.

In order to be successful in the small/medium-sized business market, Toshiba must sell notebooks in the 500 Euro range, and in order to achieve that, a Linux OS would be a very important requirement. "The corporation is seriously talking about this, and we are evaluating attentively the question [...] It is a potential business to which we do not want to close the door." - said Mr. Luigi Cattaneo.