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OLPC to Run Windows, Come to the US
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?"
I guess Bill Gates is going to stop criticizing the project now that it supports Windows...
I'll probably be modded down for this...
You know what's next ... the XO's in the real field [e.g. 3rd world nations] will start shipping with Windows instead of their OSS tools.
Yeah, MSFT won again!
I wonder how much it cost MSFT to buy them off....
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The problem is people like me fear that OLPC was bought off, and that the promise of a really open and accessible laptop for students has died.
You think it's hard to get proper tech support in the 1st world? Try it in a field school somewhere 500 miles away from the nearest large city. Running windows as opposed to the hardened linux they were developing is just inviting every random malware and virus to hop a ride through their laptops rendering them useless.
Also a lot of the innovative features like the grouping and shared sessions [as well as tailor made games/activities] probably won't be ported [or well] to Windows, leaving the kids with a really large lack of useful software.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Unless they can offer those 256Mb of RAM at a lower price than a smaller memory, it's a waste of resources. Better make an effort to lower that price than try to make it run windows. What next, the $999 OLPC to run a $300 Vista Starter Edition?
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If a picture is worth a thousand words my dissertation is going to be a dodle
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Even worse, windows is almost designed to preserve user's computer illiteracy - you don't learn how to use a computer, you rote-learn how to do some tasks using a computer running windows. The OLPC linux OS was designed to encourage exploration of what was underneath, all deliberately written in a simple programming language. The *reason* we have programmers today is because the early 8- and 16- bit platforms they grew up on encouraged exploration. My first computers came with complete schematics and a programming manual.
I spotted a typo in you post:
... designed by the computer illiterate ...
Windows is designed by lawyers, marketing analysts and people who watch other people using Macs.
lower entry barriers
You're joking, right? Microsoft is nothing but barriers to entry. $$$ for this, $$$ for that, $$$ for the other. And then more $$$ to keep it all safe. And then the same again next year.
Negroponte has screwed open source by nearly doubling the OLPC price so it can run Windows. He's just back-stabbed all the people who donated a lot of time and effort into putting together a low cost laptop and the free as in speech software to run it.
The OLPC project is now dead, just like every other venture that capitulates with Microsoft.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.