Several news organizations are reporting that the One Laptop Per Child project and Microsoft have reached an agreement to offer Windows XP as an option for countries choosing the OLPC platform for the classroom.
Fortune Magazine’s online site for example;
Making Windows available on the XO could make it far more palatable for developing-world governments to make the huge investment necessary to purchase large numbers of XOs for their children. “It’s a very big deal,” said OLPC chairman Nicholas Negroponte in an interview.
He has for three years unsuccessfully attempted to get governments to buy the laptop in lots of a million or more. Governments have so far put in firm orders for a total of 600,000 machines, and several hundred thousand are now in use. The greatest number is in Peru, followed by Uruguay, Mexico, with fewer in Rwanda, Cambodia, Mongolia and Haiti, among other countries.
Stephen McGibbon has linked a video demonstrating XP running on the XO, using a number of the unique features of the device, and performing well.
Here Bohdan Raciborski from Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential Group demos Windows and Office running on the XO, and mentions that performance seems reasonable – starting in a quarter of the time the original OS did. Bohdan also shows the electronic book mode.
And James Utzschnider has more details on his blog;
Following the Gates meeting and a series of conversations with Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie, Microsoft made a key concession. It will enable what’s called a “dual boot,” which means Windows will work alongside the XO’s original Linux operating system. Users will be able to choose which one to use. That required a big change in Microsoft’s approach, given its longstanding aversion of open source.
From my own conversations with government folks around the region here in Asia, I think that overall this will be a welcome addition to the project, offering more choice to users of the device as they learn about the technology and use the device for education in the classroom.
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