What ever happened all the desktops?

IT SEEMS that IBM might be toning down its bold resolution that it will have Linux running on all its desktops by, er, about now. As first exclusively revealed in the INQUIRER, IBM's grand supremo Sam Palmisano announced that everyone in Big Blue would have nice new Linux desktops by the end of 2005. There was much back slapping and the spinners spun after we printed the memo, oh how they spun. At the time Big Blue had 15,000 Linux desktops within the company and predicted that it would have between 40,000 and 60,000 in operation by the end of 2004. But when hacks popped back to IBM this week to ask them how they were doing with all those desktop Linux machines the spinsters were surprisingly evasive. One spokesperson said she didn't have anything to say that was "definitive" although she did say that there were people using Linux and nobody is telling them to stop. Well that is nice. She declined to say whether that 40,000 goal had been met or not. In fact she said that she didn't know if there was ever a goal of 40,000 Linux users. Actually she didn't know if there were 40,000 users already.