Colombia Signs Up For OLPC Laptops With Windows

Reader Cowards Anonymous writes with this excerpt from Good Gear Guide: "Colombia will become the second country to use the One Laptop Per Child Project's (OLPC) XO laptops running Microsoft Windows XP in schools after signing an agreement for pilot programs in two towns. Schools in the towns of Quetame and Chia will be outfitted with the small green XO laptops developed by the OLPC. The pilot programs are expected to expand over time."

Comments

Even in Colombia, Microsoft is trying to catch up

[js_sebastian]

From TFA:

The groups did not say how many laptops would be handed out as part of the trial nor when it would start.

So it's an unspecified number of laptops at an unspecified point in the future. In the mean time, the linux version of the OLPC is a step or two ahead, and will be deploying 110,000 laptops running sugar:

Last month, OLPC announced that several towns in Colombia were in the process of buying or deploying its XO laptops, most of which use a Red Hat Fedora Linux OS core customized by OLPC and a graphical user interface aimed at kids called Sugar.

An initial 20,000 laptops will be handed out at schools in the capital, Bogota, thanks to several Colombian foundations and private donors. Another 90,000 laptops will be deployed in Cartagena.

Why will this pilot use windows laptops? easy, because Microsoft is paying for a big chunk of it:

Microsoft and OLPC will donate the XO laptops

This is quite interesting, after Bill Gates said the OLPC project was the wrong thing to spend charity money on, which should be spent on more fundamental things like food and healthcare. Clearly, this is not charity, it is fighting for the marketshare of the future.

The official excuse:

The decision to put Windows on the laptops came about because officials in some countries feared a non-Windows laptop would ill prepare students for the real world, in which Microsoft software dominates.

..is totally retarded. Anyone who has had a decent education can learn to use basic office programs in a day if needed. And anyhow, by the time these kids will enter the workforce, windows will be on version 15 (we're talking primary school kids!) and anything specific they learn about the system would be totally useless.

Re:Tragedy

[Ethanol-fueled]

Robert Fripp, mastermind of long-lasting progressive geek band King Crimson, made the sounds.

Kinda odd considering that King Crimson have always been an under-the radar cult band and using their sounds on Linux would be a more fitting match. Microsoft should have instead had Fall Out Boy or Puff Daddy record the sounds, those'd be much more appropriate to Vista :)

Columbia did NOT choose Win-OLPC

[js_sebastian]

Interesting that it is a right-wing nation like Columbia that chooses to get it's OLPC laptops with Windows installed.

Colombia (not Columbia) made no such choice. This is a future pilot program of unspecified size that microsoft is at least partially paying for. In the meantime, 110000 sugar-base OLPCs are already scheduled for deployment in Colombia (according to TFA). Summary is totally misleading.

This is a blip.

[RustinHWright]

A.) This is TWO TOWNS. I'm finding all the teeth gnashing here a bit sad. The real deployments are already underway and most are using Linux.

If you RTFA you'll find that:
. . .several towns in Colombia were in the process of buying or deploying its XO laptops, most of which use a Red Hat Fedora Linux OS... An initial 20,000 laptops will be handed out . . . in . . . Bogota. Another 90,000 laptops will be deployed in Cartagena.

Around 1,000 XO laptops have been earmarked for schools in regions where the Revolutionary Army of Colombia rebel group remains active. The XO is already used in Marina Orth, former home to drug lord Pablo Escobar.

B.) And what makes you so sure that in a few years they won't eventually switch the OS on the M$ boxes when the press and suits go away? Quite a few Latin American countries are framing the switch to Linux as a nationalistic thing, as a chance to use Spanish-language optimized versions from Mexico instead of the Norteamericano corporate beast.

In short, dudes, relax.