Founder Technology, China's second biggest PC maker, after Lenovo, is to pre-install Windows Vista on business lines and laptops. Previously, it put Windows only on consumer desktops as a matter of course - about 30 per cent of overall shipments.

It looks like Microsoft will plough much of the OEM cash straight back into Founder, which has agreed to carry Windows Live on PCs shipped out over the next two years. No sums have been released. But this is nice news for Microsoft, enabling it to grab a few more fistfuls of yuan from a country where "rampant" and "piracy" go together hand in glove, in the minds of the press and American politicians at least.

Ballmer may be spending more time in The People's Republic, if Sen. John McCain gets his way. In June, the Republican presidential candidate suggested America's least diplomatic CEO, as his choice as America's Ambassador to China. Reports at the time say McCain was joking. We are not so sure, but it's a moot point. The odds of McCain becoming the US president are low, and the odds that he actually asked Ballmer to be the new John Bolton are even lower. Oh well. ®

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• Microsoft forgers get jail time in Taiwan (4 February 2008)
• Mind the Gap Saturday The biz of biz in China (Part 1) (1 December 2007)
• Ugly view mars Windows Vista birthday (30 November 2007)
• China hijacks Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! traffic? (18 October 2007)
• Microsoft, Feds, and Chinese authorities seize $2bn in pirated software (24 July 2007)
• McCain wants Ballmer as ambassador to China (4 June 2007)