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

Tragedy

[Divebus]

Isn't there enough pain and suffering down there?

Re:Tragedy

[Smelly Jeffrey]

According to the spec, the XOs have a 433 MHz CPU and 256 MB of RAM.
Windows XP requires, a 233 MHz CPU and 64 MB of RAM.

I can just picture Microsoft suggesting that the XO is overpowered for the job, and that they should run Vista instead!

Re:Tragedy

[Ethanol-fueled]

You should have been modded funny instead: according to Microsoft.com, the requirements for bottom-of-the-barrel Vista Home Basic are:

- 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
- 512 MB of system memory
- 20 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space
- Support for DirectX 9 graphics and 32 MB of graphics memory
- DVD-ROM drive
- Audio Output
- Internet access (fees may apply)

No way in hell that they're going to force that upon Micro-Laptops. If anything Microsoft are shooting themselves in the foot by keeping XP alive. Even Microsoft wouldn't be naive enough to believe that even a stripped-down version of Vista would run on one of those!

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 :)

The real question:

[Smidge207]

Will they be reinforced to stop a 9mm round?

=Smidge=

Re:The real question:

[Eternauta3k]

Whenever I see a moderation like (Score:0, Funny) I feel "I'm about to laugh at something I should be offended by"

gentlemen

[nimbius]

let the conspiracy madness begin :)

Too bad it's WIndows

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad it's Windows; they might have actually had a chance to learn something about computers. Now all they'll learn is that things mysteriously going wrong can be fixed by a reboot for equally mysterious reasons and that applications are this highly polished black box that you're not allowed to examine to determine how they work since that might violate someone's intellectual property. They'll also learn that application crashes are fairly normal, that they don't happen for good reasons that can be permanently fixed but are more like a throwing of the dice so you better save your work frequently. If they're sharp they'll also learn that open standards are bad and should be subverted whenever possible.

failure for Sugar, not for Linux?

[Mr. Slippery]

I have to wonder what role Sugar plays in the decision to go with XP.

You get one choice that looks like a computer, windows and menus and the like; and you get one choice that looks like nothing you've ever seen, that doesn't give kids experience with a typical computer internface and is based on unproven ideas about how children learn.

OLPC w/ XFCE FTW.

Re:failure for Sugar, not for Linux?

[serviscope_minor]

and you get one choice that looks like nothing you've ever seen

Oh, this old, tired line again. When I was at school, sure there was MS and Word, but it was DOS 3.2 and Word 2.something which ran in text mode only. If I remember correctly. So frankly what I had at school was NOTHING like what I have now. The point is, it doesn't matter what you teach kids today, since it will be nothing like what is in the office when they turn 21, even if you teach them MS products, they won't be the MS products of 2020.

Re:failure for Sugar, not for Linux?

[pizzach]

This may sound a bit wierd, but I wish that my first computer was a commodore 64. I think it would have been a much more educational experience than Win 3.1 on a mulitimedia PC. Meh. Shoulda woulda coulda.

Re:failure for Sugar, not for Linux?

[Cajun Hell]

Did I learn MORE than someone using Win 3.1? No. I learned different stuff. I did learn about PEEKs and POKEs and an oddball OS running on very, very limited hardware.

Actually, you did learn something. You learned about memory-mapped I/O, something that most programmers of higher-level OSes are never exposed to (because they use APIs instead). Later, when you get down in the dirt and have to write a driver or something, your C64 general programming experience has prepared you for something that normally only OS hackers are prepared for.

Oh, and your VIC-20 experience probably warped you toward memory efficiency, in a way that the later machines wouldn't. Or at least that happened to me, and it took a while to unlearn. ;)

hmmm.

[apodyopsis]

FTFA

Installing Microsoft software in OLPC's laptops has been controversial. OLPC started out offering Linux on the devices because the OS costs nothing and organizers believed it made the device run more efficiently. Some open-source software advocates hoped the XO would spread the use of Linux and the open source philosophy to the 5 billion people living without computers in the developing world.

Microsoft hopes to capture these 5 billion people for its future market potential.

..at least they are honest about it. and none of this "offering a better, competative.." rubbish. its plain old "get them when they are young" philosophy....

Re:hmmm.

[Atlantis-Rising]

As opposed to the equally blatantly stated "Spread the use of Linux and the open source philosophy"?

They're both attempting to do the same thing... but apparently, Microsoft has more money to throw at the problem.

Re:hmmm.

[DerekLyons]

The funny part is, it's the OSS advocates referenced in the article who have been pushing "get 'em while they're young" under the guise of "offering a better etc..." as a feature while insisting the same behavior by Microsoft is a bug.

Re:hmmm.

[EvilRyry]

Spreading free and open access to information is a bit nicer goal than getting the kids young so we can rape them with licensing fees when they get older.

Re:hmmm.

[Atlantis-Rising]

Possibly. I'm not necessarily convinced that free and open access to information is necessary... or even useful.

However, IMNSHO, that's not what Open Source is about anyway. Open Source has really never been terribly important for your average person; all of its important freedoms relate to developers. The freedom to sprout wings and fly away is irrelevant to people who have no ability to sprout wings and fly away, and in the same manner, the vast majority of computer users (and this percentage is growing, not shrinking) are not developers. Open Source, arguably, does not strive to protect them or provide open and free access to them.

Microsoft's tactics are primarily profit-driven, of course. But Microsoft is no longer a booming growth organization like it once was; it must shift its goals toward long-term sustainability and medium growth, and this it has tried to do. You'll notice this in the fact that Microsoft's licensing fees are not terribly high. The vast majority of users, in fact, do not pay these fees on anything but an irregular basis, and the fees they do pay, which are rolled into OEM machines, are so low when spread across the time involved that Microsoft's 'raping license fees' work out for your average user somewhere between $20-$30 per year, I would imagine.

Is free cheaper? Certainly! But it's patently obvious that Microsoft hardly rapes their customer base with license fees. This is especially true in developing countries where copyright infringement runs entirely rampant. Huge numbers of people would rather pirate Windows in the developing world than run Linux, and I think that says something about Microsoft's sustainability strategy.

Ultimately, I think Microsoft's attempts here, and in various other places across the globe is merely an attempt by the organization to replace its pirated software with licensed software, by making it clear what benefit partnership with Microsoft brings, including huge rebates and funding sponsorships. The problem is that Linux doesn't bring huge wads of cash with it. The value of open source software is intangible and arguably non-existent to a lot of these people.

Re:hmmm.

[Tubal-Cain]

OSS advocates don't have financial motivation for their suggestion. And I don't see any "under the guise of..."-type posts.

Re:hmmm.

[rolfwind]

The vast majority of users, in fact, do not pay these fees on anything but an irregular basis, and the fees they do pay, which are rolled into OEM machines, are so low when spread across the time involved that Microsoft's 'raping license fees' work out for your average user somewhere between $20-$30 per year, I would imagine.

Why, as a consumer, can I not buy Windows for a similiar low price, or a low multiple? Why is it in the hundreds of $$$? Why are there over 6 versions of Vista now? Why not just 2?

Possibly. I'm not necessarily convinced that free and open access to information is necessary... or even useful.

Don't use wikipedia then. I use it about 50 times a day. I just contributed $100 toward it because it's that usefull to me. No static, "closed-soure" encyclopedia comes close for me for 'esoteric' topics.

Re:hmmm.

[Atlantis-Rising]

Why, as a consumer, can I not buy Windows for a similiar low price, or a low multiple? Why is it in the hundreds of $$$? Why are there over 6 versions of Vista now? Why not just 2?

For much the same reason as large organizations get deep, deep discounts on anything else and individuals don't. Economies of scale.

As for the versioning, it's worth nothing that while there are... six? versions of Windows, Microsoft has not attempted, nor expects, that all of those versions of windows can be bought by all people. For 99% of home users, there are two versions- Home Premium and Ultimate.

For 99% of Business uses, there are three versions- Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate. Enterprise is available solely through Software Assurance, and provides a variety of licensing and support benefits not otherwise available... but again, if you're licensing from Microsoft via SA, you've got people who know which version is best for you.

There are a lot of versions out there, no doubt about it. It's not a good thing. But it's not like Microsoft just dumped six different versions on store shelves and said "Go buy!"

Don't use wikipedia then. I use it about 50 times a day. I just contributed $100 toward it because it's that usefull to me. No static, "closed-soure" encyclopedia comes close for me for 'esoteric' topics.

That was not exactly what I was referring to when I said 'free and open access to information'... information, like any tool, can be used as a weapon. I'm not in favor of wandering down the street handing out fully loaded assault rifles to passers-by, so why should I be in favor of handing out copies of "The Prepatory Manual of Explosives"?

Re:hmmm.

[Atlantis-Rising]

Yes, but the linux option will benefit the kids more...

Perhaps, but you certainly haven't proven such a claim.

Linux gives them a system which is open, allowing those kids who are technically minded to learn about it in depth and provide support to their peers. When they grow up, those kids will be able to sell such services to others, while the non technical kids will be able to buy support services from the others. So you end up with an IT industry that's locally based, rather than having to pay for expensive foreign services and additional software (what seems like pocket change to people in the first world, is a months wages for people in these third world countries).

This is entirely supposition, but more importantly, it's based on a chain of events that's never been shown to actually occur in a lot of the developing world. Places like India, with developed computer-sience industries don't start making their money by selling to theselves. They make their money by doing work for foreign organizations cheaper. The problem is, Linux doesn't pay very well.

And if you train people in the third world sufficiently well, they will be able to provide services to people in the first world, and because the cost of living is so much lower they can live like kings while still undercutting the competition.

Possibly. Providing services like that, however, requires significant infrastructure investment, and in fact, the OLPC people are not, to my knowledge, training anyone at all to do anything. They are merely providing laptops. Suggesting that poor villagers will get into software development and support to support their families is ridiculous, in my opinion.

However, you really ignored my primary point. Linux adds nothing of value. Open Source is not valuable to people in the developing world. Microsoft, however, goes in and throws around buckets of money- both Microsoft's and the Gates Foundation's- and that is valuable.

That's why those places choose Microsoft. Because it's 'better'. There's more value.

Re:hmmm.

[Atlantis-Rising]

It's not just about the Microsoft tax but the fact that Microsoft conspires against you in order to make it nearly impossible to use anything else. It doesn't matter what your requirements. It doesn't matter how poorly Microsoft's product meeds those requirements. If they get their way, you will be forced to use their crap whether you want to or not.

Firstly, it's linguistically incorrect to call it a tax. A tax, by definition, is a charge imposed by a government.

However, that point aside, your argument is not new. All organized economic systems will gravitate toward monopoly and all systems, period, will gravitate toward homogeneity without an external guiding force. The advantages, in both cases, are simply too large to ignore.

This is especially true in software. It's not even that Microsft has to conspire against you. Compatibility is simply so important, and the easiest way to be compatible is for everyone to have the same thing. There is enormous impetus for everyone to adopt the market leader in software in order to maintain that same compatibility.

Now, whether or not Microsoft is purposefully stopping their opponents from being compatible, they probably are, although I think it's nowhere near as bad as some people claim. Microsoft is a large, almost monolithic entity, and it is very slow to adapt. Given the speed at which other organizations can, and have in the past adapted, I think there are many other forces in play preventing ultimate compatibility with Microsoft systems, some of which are more significant, than Microsoft's obstinate 'conspiracy'.

The only thing that's keeping them at bay is Free Software.

It even helps keep the world safe for the one remaining real
competitor to Microsoft left: namely Apple.

Can we please keep the nutcase conspiracy wanking down to a dull roar?

It's more than just the cost of Windows. It's also the cost of
all of the overhead of dealing with Windows crap and remaining
"compatible" with whatever sort of app Microsoft might have
dominance in today.

This argument applies to anything... for example, healthcare service provisioning. And yet the argument is ultimately uncompelling. If you compare universal healthcare to market-based health care, in almost every metric universal health care in the western world comes out better overall, despite being, almost by nature, a monopoly at one level or another.

There are, indeed, overhead costs that arise. But these costs, in many cases, are not sufficient to outweigh the simple gains of homogeneity that arises through monopoly.

Re:hmmm.

[Toll_Free]

I call bullshit.

Accordingly, your theory would say that nobody in IT today would have learned on MS platforms.

I did.

And most people in the industry, outside of *nix and OS/400 types, also did. Or migrated from other machines to PC based hardware when the other machines (Commodores, etc) disappeared.

So saying that open source will breed tech types is complete bullshit. Tech types will figure out how to work on their machines as well as modify them, no matter what the operating system is.

--Toll_Free

Cool

[Rik Sweeney]

Now they won't need drugs mules anymore because they can simply email us the cocaine!

Re:...and the slavery begins.

[icepick72]

Nevermind that it's second-rate and vastly inferior to Linux in more aspects than I care to count.
Unless you look at the aspects where Linux is inferior to Windows.

They'll all be dependent on us!
How did Microsoft becomes "us"? ... assuming you mean the Windows OS on the XO laptops. Microsoft is based in the US but the company exists around the world so finding support shouldn't be hard from any country. You're too Microsoft focused. Your perceived entrapment case is larger than you think if you broaden your scope beyond only the OS: OLPC is funded by member organizations, including AMD, Brightstar Corporation, eBay, Google, Marvell, News Corporation, SES, Nortel Networks, and Red Hat.[2][3] Each company has donated two million dollars. While OLPC is 'not for profit', the XO-1 manufacturers including many members are expected to receive 5-10% profit from sales of the unit. Companies are profiting fiscally and Microsoft isn't mentioned...

crippling developing nations with Windows, future generations are gonna hate us more than you can ever imagine...
Nothing is being forced on them. It's the developing country's choice what to deploy. There's no reason for "them" to hate "us" over their decision about these laptops.

Dammit the incessant arguing gets tiring. Ultimately these countries are getting set up with hardware and software. Learning can be achieved on any of these platforms. Many techies are putting their OS arguments as priority over real people in developing nations. This is why things slow down. But this is tech news, and maybe we shouldn't expect to find many altruistic nerds.

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:...and the slavery begins.

[Anonymous Coward]

How did Microsoft becomes "us"? ...

Agreed. But also remember that the US government allowed that company to get away with its questionable practices. And the government was chosen by the people (isn't that supposed to be a democracy?) so you can't really say people are 0.000% innocent on this.

Nothing is being forced on them. It's the developing country's choice what to deploy.

On the immediate situation you're right.
On the other hand, most (perhaps all?) of the countries in Latin America had their history heavily changed by the U.S. thanks to its Cold War policies.

Things changed for better, for worse? Dunno. I used to be a leftist until my mid 20s, nowadays I'm sceptic of both sides.
The only thing I'm sure is that the governments we have nowadays in Latin America would not exist the way they are, had the U.S. not interfered.

Historical responsability is made of lots of grey tones.

weopenlatest

[weopenlatest]

Interesting that it is a right-wing nation like Columbia that chooses to get it's OLPC laptops with Windows installed. There's no good reason why the choice of software should be a political decision (that goes for you too, Stallman), yet so often that is the case.

I'd like to invite some of the government officials who balked at a commie OS to my office where they can see that real business is done with open source products all the time.

Re:Even in Colombia, Microsoft is trying to catch

[js_sebastian]

"...totally retarded"? Right. Don't take your "decent education" for granted. Only about half the Colombians go to high school and it may not even be free down there.

I don't take decent education for granted. I just don't think "using *office" (microsoft's or any other version) should be anywhere near a kid's education, at all, except as a tool to write reports essays and stuff (and for that, OLPC-sugar offers abiword). Just like you don't teach them to operate a cash register, or to build walls, just because that's the work they might end up doing. Education (especially early education) is NOT about giving pupils the tools for today's job market. It is about giving them the basic culture/mindset that allows them to become CITIZENS and learn the tools for tomorrow's job market, when they will need them.

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.

Someone who learned how to use Office 95 13 years ago can probably work their way around the latest version of office. And it's smart to target at the education level accessible to all children, which is different for each country.

Yeah, and someone who used lotus notes 15 years ago will also be able to wrap his head around excel, ribbon or no ribbon.

How Open Source benefits consumers

[SethJohnson]

I hate getting into internet arguments, and I'm only replying to this comment because Atlantis seems like a thoughtful person who has presented a reasoned, but off-mark perspective here.

Open Source has really never been terribly important for your average person; all of its important freedoms relate to developers.

The freedoms that Open Source brings to developers directly impacts users. Support for hardware and software provided by corporations can only last as long as there is a commercial interest in people using a given product. Old peripherals don't get drivers coded by their vendor for new OS releases and new peripherals don't get drivers bundled for old OS installations. Open source has thankfully picked up the slack for these users. Microsoft intentionally is withholding additional development on fixes, updates, etc. on this end-of-lifed OS, pressuring users to purchase an upgrade to its replacement OS. As new protocols, file formats, and other technical evolutions come along, XP will not be updated to support them.

With the OLPC program, WinXP laptop recipients are being shackled to limited future use of their gifted laptop. The Sugar laptop recipients have a multitude of developers committed to continuing the relevance of their platform for many years to come.

Please don't take this as a Microsoft-bashing rant. Substitute the name 'Microsoft' with any closed-source vendor. Microsoft is just the convenient example in this discussion. Take Internet Explorer. Once Netscape collapsed, there was no commercial incentive for Microsoft to improve its browser. (Yes, I know this is heading into the economics of competition-- I'll return to the original point of Open Source benefiting the user.) Since MS dominated the product category, they could withdraw those development resources to focus on other areas of generating profit. Internet Explorer withered for years because there was no pressure to add features or increase it's performance. The cost of developing a new, competing browser from scratch eliminated any possible threats from other commercial software vendors, too. That is, if they weren't given a community-developed code base for free. Eventually, Internet Explorer became embarrassingly antiquated, lacking modern features such as tabbed browsing because open source projects brought innovations to this product category which motivated Microsoft to restart IE development.

I could go on with many more examples of open source benefiting consumers, but I pity this dead horse I'm beating.

Seth

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.

F*ck "justice". Let's stick to concrete tools.

[RustinHWright]

Well, waddayaknow? A visitor from the past. 1973, perhaps.

Take off your beret, put down the joint, and join the twenty-first century. Those of us living in the real world have long since figured out that projects like OLPC are among the cheapest, fastest ways per child to, say, increase literacy.

You want clean water and reductions in child mortality? Then you need people who understand basic concepts of biology so that they understand *why* they need to track what is upstream versus down from a latrine.

You want feminism? Then reduce the labor needed to get chores done. Many superior approaches can be learned from the kind of information sharing that networked computers provide. AND they help users organize, which is about as "justice"-oriented a dynamic as anybody rational could ask for.

You want "justice" as such? I love vague terms like that. Is there somewhere I can, say, buy twelve pounds of "justice"? Or is it sold by the box? As *real* revolutionaries have long known (is Mao revolutionary enough for you?) an ignorant populace is an easily controlled populace.
To free "the masses", you maximize the ease and speed and minimize the cost of spreading books, radio, and so on. Ideally, you should do this in a decentralized way where routing is damage-tolerant and reroutes around barriers. A way where readers control what content goes here and how. On the large scale, we call our system for that "the internet". On the small scale, the protocols and hardware of the XO replicate that with great effectiveness and flair.

Devices like these, for example, help spread up to date information on crop prices. This makes it harder for brokers to cheat farmers and helps farmers know what to plant, how to raise it, what blights are around and how to treat them, and when to bring what products to market.

This is what real world revolution looks like. This IS justice. Far more so than anything bullshit powermongers like FARC or Shining Path will ever accomplish. And these aren't "leftovers". These are special purpose machines designed and built (very well, as it happens) for doing exactly this.

You have something useful to contribute, then join right in. If you just want to spout meaningless slogans that insult those doing real work, then bugger off.