posting now, you'll know which one is me, I'm saying mine works.

That's odd, 10.04 works fine with the wireless in my EeePc 901. Alpha straight up through the release candidate. Yes mine does have the RaLink RT2860 wireless chip. I actually use my Eee as my test platform for all the new Ubuntu releases, since I don't store anything on it it's easy to wipe and do clean installs. A month or two on that before upgrading my workstation (if at all, depending on the release).

We can argue the percentages of profit in this business model but I would like to remind everyone of how much we aren't paying. My brother and I saved up and shelled out $40 (that's what I remember, can anyone confirm this?) in the 80s when Pac Man came out for the Atari 2600. Was the game worth that? Hell no, it was terrible. Are games now worth $60? I'm not sure. Some games I might pay $100 for, others I won't play until I see a 3 year old used copy for $9.99. Basically we're lucky they haven't tried to milk us for more.