p2pnet - rss feed: OLPC XO gets Windowed
p2pnet news | Freedom:- Sad news.
The people running the One Laptop Per Child project, struggling for acceptance and viability since the beginning, have caved in to the blandishments of Bill and the Boyz.
XO has been polluted with the Windows Blue Screen of Death.
Or as the Boston Globe sums it up nicely, “Laptops for poor to run Windows XP,” with all that implies.
The machine, with a Linux-based OS and developed to help underprivileged children around the world, will become dual boot.
“Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the Cambridge, Mass., group, acknowledged that having Windows as an option could reassure education ministers who have hesitated to buy XOs with its interface, called Sugar,” says the Los Angeles Times, also noting the $100 laptops are now selling them for $188.
Some of the education ministers were no doubt advised on the intricacies of operating systems by experts from abroad.
Now, “Beginning with limited runs next month, XO buyers will have the option of laptops with or without Windows.”
Naturally, Windows XOs will be more expensive, going out for another $18 to $20, $3 of which goes back to Microsoft.
The rest covers “hardware adjustments,” says the LA Times.
“It’s not about the operating system, it’s about the educational experience,” the Boston Globe has OLPC CEO Chuck Kane saying.
“He said the foundation’s Sugar suite of educational software is being modified to run atop Windows.
“The project aims to persuade developing countries to buy millions of XO laptops and distribute them free to poor children.”
This is but a modification of Bill Gates’ early philosophy on how he’d go about hooking people in China on Microsoft.
Talking to students at the University of Washington business school in 1998, “Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software,” he said, going on:
“Someday they will, though. And as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours.
“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
.
.Stumble It!
Boston Globe - Laptops for poor to run Windows XP, May 16, 2008
Los Angeles Times - One Laptop per Child computers now can run Windows, May 16, 2008
sort of addicted - Bill Gates’ China sales trip, July 3, 2004
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May 16th, 2008 at 10:16 am
At least it’s XP and not shitty Vista
May 16th, 2008 at 10:29 am
As far as i have found out these laptops duel boot so even if the government has paid for windows the kids can still use linux.
May 16th, 2008 at 11:35 am
I will definitively not run Windows on a machine such as these.
Microcrap is worry because their stupid OS is a nasty and hugly bloatware, highly unsecure. Low power super ship laptop such as OLPC XO run great on linux. Did you see the Asus? On Linux it boot in six sec and shutdown Instantly! It have all the functionalities of windows but is a lot more secured! Save for the small screen it is a prety good system. One of my older computer ( AMD Athlon 1GHZ 1gb ram) is on Umbutu and is running better and faster than my more powerful Vista machine and even faster that my 2K system! What a joke for microsloch! If you want a really fast machine buy a duocore 64bit system and run Umbutu 64!
Whow!
May 17th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Proselytize them while they are young, that is the M$ mantra. If they have to bribe governments and give away windoze for free, then that’s fine too. One of their recent quotes comes to mind concerning piracy especially in Asia:
“As long as they pirate our software, then we can always tap that market in the future.” or something to that effect. They just want to keep a strangle hold on the market and they don’t care how they do it. Governments are cheap to buy off, so expect a lot of them to demand windoze on the OLPC.