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OLPC to Run Windows, Come to the US

Posted by Zonk on from the gone-a-little-bit-off-course-here dept.

An anonymous reader writes "'Yesterday Nicholas Negroponte, former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and current head of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project, gave analysts and journalists an update on the OLPC project. Two big changes were announced — the $100 OLPC is now the $175 OLPC, and it will be able to run Windows. Even in a market where there are alternatives to using Windows and Office, there's a huge demand for Microsoft software. The OLPC was seen as a way for open source Linux distributions to achieve massive exposure in developing countries, but now Negroponte says that the OLPC machine will be able to run Windows as well as Linux. Details are sketchy but Negroponte did confirm that the XO's developers have been working with Microsoft to get the OLPC up to spec for Windows.' We also find out that the OLPC gets a price hike and will officially come to the US. Could this be tied into Microsoft's new $3 Windows XP Starter and Office 2007 bundle? Now that the OLPC and Intel's Classmate PC can both run Windows, is Linux in the developing world in trouble?"

5 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. The death of Linux on OLPC is greatly exaggerated by HerbieStone · · Score: 5, Informative
    From here and here

    True: Microsoft is working on a Windows based system that can be executed on the OLPC laptop.
    False: There is no strategy change. The OLPC is continuing to develop a Linux-based software set for the laptop in conjunction with Red Hat. But since the OLPC project is open we cannot (and maybe even don't want to) stop other people from developing and supplying alternate software packages.

  2. Re:Not News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The price has gone up because the memory and drive space have mysteriously doubled from 128MB to 256MB and 512MB to 1GB, respectively.

  3. Congratulations by Vexorian · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'd like to congratulate this project for becoming a total failure.

    I live in a third world country, let me say this: 175 $us is too expensive, that 75% more actually means a reduction in possible buyers by 90% (Although this statistic is totally made up, I am pretty sure this is the case, let's say 85%~95%), as a matter of fact, here it is possible to get a 'real' computer (Pentium I, which is enough for a child's computer, did you know?) for 150$us.

    And all of this so it can run windows...

    --

    Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
  4. Technically, no by DrYak · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, my Vista boot goes faster than my Ubuntu boot


    Several users of both systems (including my own experience) tends to show that Windows comes up with a desktop earlier than Linux. But once there the disk is still trashing for some time. Whereas on Linux, once you're logger, you're logged and everything is ready to run.
    The whole stuff is build on windows to give you the impression that it is faster.
    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  5. Re:Not News by niiler · · Score: 5, Informative
    Wired.com has the update here:

    OLPC spokesman Kyle Austin says the wire services got it wrong. In response to a request from Microsoft, the project gave Redmond some early demo models of the XO to play with -- but that was over a year ago. "Their developers are toying with it," Austin told Wired News editor Kevin Poulsen.

    OLPC hasn't changed the XO's design to support Windows, and has no formal partnership with Microsoft, he says.

    So as often happens, the story is more sensationalist than anything else.