A rather curious notion appears in the article cited by Shestowitz that was
intended as a slam against Intel and indirectly Microsoft. It may be that
the poor folks schlepping around in the undeveloped nations have a
preference for Windows just as the more sophisticated folk in the US of A.
To wit:
"Microsoft has five or so XOs working in its research labs, and, according
to Poole, has sought repeatedly to interest Negroponte in using Windows. But
OLPC's position has been that while it wants Windows, it would only take it
if it were open-sourced. That, Poole says firmly and unsurprisingly,
Microsoft would never do. But Thursday when I asked Negroponte point blank
if he still insisted on open-sourcing Windows as a condition for it running
on the XO, he answered clearly: "No."
The reason appears to be that as the date approaches for firm commitments of
big bucks, many interested countries are simply unwilling to risk hundreds
of millions of dollars on an unproven machine. "There's enough interest from
the countries for us to make sure it boots both," Negroponte says. As
Microsoft's Poole points out, no government leader wants to be known as the
one who bought their country's kids a million underpowered laptops that
don't run decent software."
http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/27/technology/fastforward_xo.fortune/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote
Now that is the crux of the matter and I have said it myself many times in
the past. The image that the world has of Linux is as an ersatz kind of
Windows that is substituted for the real thing in order to save money. What
seems to be often ignored is that people on the dole are not as interested
in saving money as are those who have money to save. Guess where that ends
up for the OLPC.
As for the Intel Classmate, it runs Windows XP and if you go to the
Classmate website and watch the video clips touting its success in the
Nigerian schools, you can easily see Windows in action. Everyone seems to
be smiling, too.
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