[LINK] OLPC and Microsoft punt Windows-only XO laptop

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

OLPC and Microsoft punt Windows-only XO laptop
Odd couple shack up
By Kelly Fiveash
Published Friday 16th May 2008 15:13 GMT
The Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/16/olpc_windows_xo_laptop/

Microsoft and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) foundation have confirmed 
that the XO laptop will soon be available as Windows-loaded machines.

They will be sold in five or six countries (Microsoft hasn’t said which 
ones) starting in June, with a broader release penciled in for August or 
September this year.

The announcement follows last month’s email from the OLPC project 
founder Nicholas Negroponte. He said at the time that the group had 
reached an agreement with the software giant to adapt the distinctive 
green and white XO laptop to run the Windows operating system.

The XO laptops, which come with a $188 price tag, have been designed to 
save the children of developing countries from a world without 
technology, although take up has so far been somewhat sluggish.

Negroponte has also called for the development of a dual-boot XO laptop 
with both Linux and Windows to give the world's poorest school kids the 
widest range of choice, but so far, Microsoft’s not really playing ball.

The firm said yesterday that the initial, limited run of XOs will ship 
as Windows-only machines. Meanwhile, the OLPC group will work with third 
parties to port its user interface, called Sugar, to Windows.

Negroponte, who has been keen to justify the group’s new tie-in with 
Microsoft, has stressed that running Red Hat’s Linux distribution on the 
machines seriously limited their credibility among governments and 
companies reluctant to invest in a non-Windows system.

Comments like that have caused serious internal wrangles and a number of 
high-profile resignations at the OLPC foundation in recent months.

Walter Bender was the group's third high-profile casualty when he walked 
out of the organisation in April. Since December it has also lost chief 
technology officer Mary Lou Jepsen and top security architect Ivan Krstic.

Negroponte insisted as recently as last month that the group’s decision 
to climb into bed with Microsoft - a move viewed by many commentators as 
an odd coupling - would not lead to the foundation abandoning its open 
source commitments.

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Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Sydney Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au