Guaranteeing "no demand" through poor products

I don't think that much thought is going into it, there is always some buzzing around Desktop Linux so vendors from time to time dip their toe in the water to gauge the response but they aren't exactly going to restructure the company around Desktop Linux without some demonstrated growth of paying customers. For the most part Linux works well enough on their existing models so there really isn't any reason to throw resources into it. It's like when VA Linux tried to be a better Dell, selling cheap x86 Linux boxes, it turns out the best Dell is Dell.