‘$100 laptop’ nonprofit now teamed with Microsoft

May 17, 2008

The One Laptop per child project is about to find out whether Microsoft Corp., a rival group nonprofit once derided, is the solution to their problems in the dissemination of low-cost laptops for schoolchildren.

Microsoft & Laptop organization announced Thursday that the nonprofit organization of green and white “XO” Now computers can run Windows, in addition to its interface at home, que se basa en open the Linux operating system. That had been anticipated for months, but that amounts to a major change.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the laptop project - which aims to produce $ 100 computers, but now sells for $ 188 - acknowledged that having Windows as an option could reassure the ministers of education who have hesitated to Xos buy with its new interface, called Sugar. Negroponte had hoped to sell several million laptops by now, but has received about 600000 orders.

From limited run next month, XO buyers will have the option of computers loaded with or without Windows. With Windows versions cost $ 18 to $ 20 plus $ 3 of which is for Windows, and the remainder refers to the hardware settings, as an additional memory-card slot, needed to run Windows.

Shortly Negroponte expects to sell only one type of machine with a “dual-boot” mode, meaning that users have Windows and Linux and elect that every time. Because it takes advantage of a new hardware design larger, the dual-boot Xos cost about $ 10 more than the current versions, said Negroponte.

Despite the higher price - Windows and the inability to take advantage of some key features of the XO - Negroponte said his project would benefit from the strengths of Microsoft in the sale and deployment of technology.

“I think our goals are to improve dramatically with the decision by Microsoft and this partnership because we will reach many more children,” he said. “There are now many more countries willing to see the XO and collaborative learning and some of the things we stand for.”

The partnership culminates a strange dance.

Not long after Negroponte first dreamed the idea of planting the developing world with $ 100 laptops for education, spoke with Microsoft about using a version of Windows on the machines. That seemed to disappear in a short time, such as Microsoft, Bill Gates and a close partner, Intel Corp. Chairman Craig Barrett, publicly dismissed the Xos’ scale-back processing power and the small screen.

At first Negroponte took the criticism as a badge of honor, saying it showed that his small group of upend the notebook market. “When you have both Intel and Microsoft on your case, you know you’re doing something right,” Negroponte said to cheers at a Linux convention in 2006.

Negroponte had other reasons to carry out a path separate from Windows. On the one hand, Linux is free. That is key when you’re trying to make a $ 100 computer. In addition, Linux is seen as easier to configure for Xos’ specific innovations, such as its ultra-low power consumption.

Negroponte and his team also talked about how the open nature of Linux more suitable project for the vision “constructivist” learning, teaching children with others and themselves tinkering with your computer. Negroponte has said it is sad when children learn to use computers primarily as tools for office automation.

“The one hundred dollar laptop is an education project,” says often. “It’s not a laptop project.”

However, it is enough for a laptop project that Negroponte is anxious to speed XO sales and donations beyond its initial deployment, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Mongolia and Birmingham, Ala.

Negroponte was the first major change to make peace with Intel last year, hoping to boost Xos “technical development and blunting competition from Intel’s computer class. But the relationship ended after only a few months.

The relationship of Microsoft seeks resistant. Microsoft engineers spent last year customizing a version of Windows that can operate in Xos. Even so, for now Xos running Windows can not use some of the machines and security of its built-in “mesh” for wireless networks.

Negroponte said last month that the time might be the only Windows operating system, with the sugar acts as educational software running on top of it. But on Thursday not anticipate that happening.

However, one key question will be whether to have Windows on portable computers: children make less use of sugar, one of the core projects of innovations. Recently, a splinter group formed to maintain the development of Sugar, and Negroponte is enduring complaints that education is no longer his top priority.

“OLPC changed its mission outright, and in most of the ill-conceived way imaginable,” Ivan Krstic, a former developer of security for the laptop group, recently wrote in an e-mail.

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