Microsoft Wants OLPC System to Run Windows XP

Stony Stevenson passed us a link to an IT News story about Microsoft's recent request that the folks behind the XO laptop redesign it to suit their needs. The company now wants to be able to run Windows XP on the highly-publicized and inexpensive portable. "Microsoft general manager ... Utzschneider says a shrunken version of Windows XP could potentially run on 2 Gbytes of flash memory. The XO, however, can only hold 1 Gbyte. As a result, Microsoft wants the XO's designers to add a slot through which more memory can be added via a secure digital (SD) card, Utzschneider said. Microsoft's renewed interest in participating in OLPC might be viewed by skeptics as an admission that a rival offering for developing markets called Classmate — which uses an Intel processor on Microsoft software — has failed to catch on."

Comments

It ALREADY has an SD card slot

[hausen]

From OLPC's hardware specs page:
External connectors
(...)

• Flash Expansion: SD Card slot.

See also: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/SD .

Re:It ALREADY has an SD card slot

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the article is referring to the existing SD slot, in what is extremely old and somewhat misleading news. Negroponte has apparently said in several interviews that the SD slot was "added just for Microsoft". It's not clear if this is true, or if he is just kidding, or if he is saying it in an attempt to garner Microsoft's favor. Walter Bender, president of OLPC software and content, gave a different reason for the slot six months ago:

I haven't seen the email and don't know the context, but the first-hand history of why there is an SD-card slot on the machine is: (1) We needed to add an ASIC to improve NAND access; (2) We took this as an opportunity to add a video camera contoller at minimal additional cost; (3) At essentially no additional cost, we added an SD-card slot to give the kids more options re storing their videos (at the time, we were only planning on .5G of on-board NAND. While it is probably a cleaner solution for MS to take advantage of SD rather than USB, there was not and still is not room on-board for Windows and there has been from Day One external expansion capability.

It's not clear why Negroponte appears so eager to work with Microsoft while the rest of the project does not, but there seem to be some political undercurrents at work. Some idle speculation on why he might do such a thing:

• With Windows running on the XO, the XO can compete directly with other sublaptops on hardware alone. While this runs counter to the project's "education first" goal in the short term, it may lead to longer term success, since the XO is much more rugged than any other candidates (and Linux will probably perform better on the XO than Windows will).
• With Windows available on all platforms, Microsoft has less incentive to back any one platform and therefore has less incentive use its resources to derail the project.
• Windows on the XO means that the project can deflect the inflated expectations of individual first-world purchasers onto Microsoft, leaving the OLPC able to focus on the large educational systems that are its primary target.

Why Windows on the OLPC is a bad idea.

[n1hilist]

1. You're are not legally allowed to share it with your friends, not even for educational use!

2. Viruses/Spyware - this is a computer designed to give new users an introduction to computing, and a tool for education, can you imagine the grief virii would cause here, especially in a mass scale / network environment.

3. Cost.

4. Linux is not communism, Vendor lock-in is.

I'm a sysadmin at a school in South Africa, the funding is poor, the choices we have are limited. I really feel strongly against bringing M$ into the OLPC scene, these computers are about education, sharing and hopefully the spirit of giving. Not virii, DRM, WGA, Vendor Lock-In and legal woes.

I for one would not welcome these monopolistic overlords.

bizarre story

[ywwg]

This is a bizarre story, seeing as I've had a 4 gig SD card plugged into my OLPC for more than a year. It's been there the whole time, and there was even an inaccurate rumor that the slot was added just for microsoft. In fact it turned out to cost next to nothing to add the connector.

I don't think this is an admission of anything.

[mrsbrisby]

Microsoft has a long history of announcing new vaporware whenever someone does something interesting to try and keep as many people waiting until the Microsoft branded version comes out. Anyone remember Cairo? Microsoft was going to have us using a fulltext searchable metadata-rich filesystem back in the early 1990's so we didn't have to retrain to build on NeXT. Microsoft was going to be bringing us pen-based computers in the late 1980's so nobody should early-adopt with Dylan on Newton.

They don't have any intention of getting Windows to run on the OLPC. If they can buy enough time for the OLPC to run out of money, they don't have to do anything, and that is more like Microsoft. So long as Microsoft has presence in a market, the market remains stalled, and the state of the art languishes.

It's already got it...

[drwho]

Well, I hope when they come to Cambridge, Microsoft will realize a few things:

1) The machine is in production. It's too late to make hardware changes. Wayyyyy too late.

2) It's already got an SD slot. And it will hold a 4gb, possibly 8gb, SD device.

3) OLPC is not really interested in running Windows..or any other proprietary product (even the Marvell Libertas has been a very contentious issue). Go port XP to the XO if you want, but don't expect to be welcomed with open arms.

4) How can you be so clueless as to the above facts? Perhaps you could blithely ignore #3, but #1 and #2 are pretty evident.

Re:Yes

[swebster]

You need to have a windows license to use that. The IE eula requires it. See here: http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Legal_notices