"This really wasn't what our customers were looking for," said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien, as quoted by the AP.

Frankly, I'd be a little surprised if the retailer sold any of them past December.

Why? For three reasons:

1.) The stereotype: Yes, anyone could have walked into a Wal-Mart and bought one of the gPCs. But I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that, with Linux having a few percentage points (if that) of desktop PC market share, that the typical Wal-Mart shopper would simply be baffled by anything that wasn't a Windows OS, no matter how easy the GUI was to use.

2.) I'd also bet that there was a significantly higher number of returns of the product by customers who were attracted by the price point, took it home, and became frustrated for any number of reasons.

3.) Tech-savvy consumers who wanted a gPC either purchased one in the first few days they went on sale, or bought one as a gift over the holidays. Once those holidays were completed, I'm betting that the gPCs probably sat there.

And how many gPCs were on a Wal-Mart's shelves at any one time? According to the AP, Wal-Mart sold through its inventory, but decided not to restock them. That isn't the sort of sell-through number that makes the world's largest retailer happy.

So does this mean the great Linux Wal-Mart experiment is over? Possibly. But I'd still like to see Wal-Mart sell a bare-bones PC with no OS for about the same price point, and then offer an OEM copy of Windows and Linux alongside it. By doing so, it might force consumers to be a bit more hands-on with their PCs in order to save a few bucks. And it might force Microsoft to realize that, the OLPC and the Classroom PC aside, there's a market for low-cost PCs right in their home country. Update: Sean Michael Kerner points out that you can still buy a gPC online.