Microsoft Corporation and the non-profit One Laptop Per Child project has announced an agreement that will put Windows XP on the OLPC XO laptop—albeit with a higher price tag attached. OLPC XO’s will still be available with the organization’s Linux-based operating system and education-centric Sugar interface, but versions will also be available with XP, which should make the notebooks easier to sell to governments and educational programs who want to be sure students are acquiring marketable skills. The companies also plan to work together on a version of the XO notebook that can boot into either XP or Sugar, and the OLPC foundation says it plans to work with third parties to port the Sugar interface to Windows.
“From the beginning, the goal of OLPC has been to use technology to transform education by bringing connectivity and constructionist learning to the poorest children throughout the world,” said OLPC chairman Nicholas Negroponte, in a statement. “Today’s announcement, coupled with future plans for a dual boot version of the XO laptop, enhances our ability to deliver on this vision.”
Microsoft says it has been working on bringing XP up on the OLPC notebook for a year; however, the current version doesn’t support some of the XO’s unique security features or mesh wireless networking, although it supports standard Wi-Fi and the XO’s integrated camera.
Trial deployments of XO notebooks running XP could get underway as soon as June; versions with Windows will cost between $18 and $20 more than the original XO notebooks, with $3 of the cost covering a Windows XP license. James Utzschneider, Microsoft’s general manager for marketing and communication for the company’s Unlimited Potential group, said in a company blog that Microsoft has been interesting in brining Windows to the OLPC platform to expand its ecosystem—enabling users to tap into the wide breadth of WIndows software available—but also because customers have been asking for it. Utzschneider also claims studies will show that Windows-equipped OLPCs will be cheaper and easier to maintain than Linux-based systems because Windows systems administrators are easier to find in development market than Linux expert—and they cost less to hire.
The OLPC’s move toward Windows has met with no small amount of criticism, including former OLPC security architect Ivan Krstić savaging the move in his personal blog as duplicitous and claiming Negroponte has no intention of porting Sugar to Windows. Further, the former head of software and content for the OLPC project, Walter Bender, has announced the formation of Sugar Labs, a non-profit set up specifically to develop new versions of Sugar, as well as adapting Sugar for other low-cost computing platforms like the Asus Eee.
