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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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The news is that Microsoft couldn't get Windows to run on it without getting the OLPC project to increase their hardware specs, and instead of just telling Microsoft to go jump, they compromised and now the laptop is going to cost more.
I said 'the news' there.. I guess I really should say 'the spin'.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
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.
The price has gone up because the memory and drive space have mysteriously doubled from 128MB to 256MB and 512MB to 1GB, respectively.
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.
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 ]
I though Bill Gates wanted to stop the spread of viruses in the third world?
So as often happens, the story is more sensationalist than anything else.
They might as well have gone with Mac OS X then. I remember Jobs offering to give Mac OS X for free for installation on the OLPC's. At least that'd have been a proper OS.
I believe that Negroponte refused, with the argument that he wanted a truly open OS. Now they've gone with windows, I think his mind must be slipping..
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
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. This statement makes no sense, (and the whole adoption of Windows argument Negroponte is using), in the context of the fact that Apple offered to give them a version of OS-X for the thing for FREE at the very beginning.
Apple was turned down on the basis that the laptop was all about the special open sourced based software. Now all of a sudden it's about that, but it's okay if it costs 75% more and runs a cut-rate version of Vista.
On the surface, it seems like Negroponte was certainly co-opted by Microsoft.
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.
I've used one. It is a real computer,though the keyboard's not clicky (it's actually very squishy and very rubber, not even hard keycaps, but it's also probably waterproof which is good) and is extremely tiny (perfect for child fingers). I was a bit confused by the UI, but then I grew up on Windows and then switched go GNOME. It's an entirely different way of thinking about UI and how you interact with it. There are 3 touchpads. One controls the mouse, though I forget what the other two do. I do agree that they need food and water, but I think this is aimed more at areas where there are a lot of not-too-poor-for-school (you can be too poor for free school if the opportunity cost of school is a bunch of money you need to make at a job to feed your family) but still not rich enough to have a computer at home families. There are a lot of families here in the US which don't have computers. They have to use the ones at libraries. That can be a problem with research papers depending on the library. The one at home closes at 6 on Fridays and stays closed on weekends (may have added 10-2 on Saturdays). My school has a 24hr library, which gets used quite a bit. If your area doesn't have a 24hr library though, you have a very limited amount of time during which you can do research considering that you're in school more than half of the hours during which the library is open. For people who have a trailer-park-quality life, the OLPC would be perfect.
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