Microsoft: Stripped-Down Version of Windows XP for OLPC Due in 2008
Submitted by srlinuxx on Wed, 12/05/2007 - 21:55.
New details surfaced Wednesday about Microsoft's plans to get Windows XP running on the OLPC.
Microsoft has been openly eyeing the OLPC project's XO Children's Machine for a year now, eager to see some version of Windows running on the tiny laptops. The design of the laptop, however, presents significant roadblocks for Microsoft -- the memory and processor capabilities of the machines were chosen with the much lighter Linux-based Sugar OS in mind. Windows is just too resource-heavy.
Microsoftie James Utzschneider, a member of MS's new "Unlimited Potential" program, has posted a lengthy overview of where the Windows-on-OLPC project stands now.
Also:
I am happy to disappoint you with news from both OLPC and Microsoft.
First off, OLPC has updated its FAQ with this emphatic "No":
Can I load Microsoft Windows onto the XO laptop?
No. The XO laptop features the Linux operating system and includes software specifically designed for children and the XO. However, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint documents can be opened on the XO laptop. Additionally, there are thousands of developers around the world currently creating software and content for the XO. For more information, visit http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities.
Better yet, we have word from Microsoft on its progress in squeezing its bloatware software onto the Children's Machine. Unlimited Potential blogger, James Utzschneider has clairified XP for the XO as "That’s not really the case yet"
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Ask not for an XP, ask for an on demand teaching website LIVE ?
The often asked question is how to make computers cheap to satisfy the digital divide?
The truth is not digital divide, but analog/digital mixed signal. Fastest data transmission with shortest data by compression.
The computer will be cheap if the cpu can do the monitor display and have direct input/output connections. Well, maybe a data storage unit attached to the cpu(internal or external) too?
Then monitor should be USB connection too? LCD monitor displays packets of pixel data directly like a printer(30 frames per second).
Less than $100 for a cpu with six usb connectors and accessories?
Microsoft should give OLPC a social website of on demand teaching software of keywords definition and keyword applications of design and functions? Search engine for the best dictionary and encyclopedia of all languages for children and adults? Microsoft has strength in languages, in their many worldwide subsidiaries?
Footnote:
Remembered going to MIT and started freshman year but could not find scientific dictionary and encyclopedia(handbooks were not sufficient) at the coop, to understand the courses MIT taught. Had to go to private tutors to learn.
Stripped-Down Version of Windows XP for OLPC Due in 2008
They'd probably be better off with Linux than an antiquated version of Windows that's over six years old.