Microsoft says it’s going to ride the nettop wave and push XP, which is supposed to die this month, onto the ultra low-cost devices meant to put e-mail, web browsing and instant messages in your pocket.

It says it’s working with 20 OEMs. It’s unclear what it’s charging but the offer is supposed to be good for two years.

Not countenancing the continued use of XP of course would have given the market to Linux.

Microsoft also said the next-generation of XP Embedded, a k a Windows Embedded Standard 2009, now in preview, will be available in Q4. It’ll run on Intel’s Atom chips as well as thin clients and POS and kiosk devices. It includes Silverlight, the RDP 6.1 protocol, .NET Framework 3.5, IE 7 and Media Player 11.