Peru to be first with new OLPC laptop with Windows

September 16, 2008, 08:22 AM —  IDG News Service — 

The government of Peru will run the first ever trial of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) association's low-cost XO laptop running on Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, putting the nation at the heart of a software controversy.

The little green laptop, which OLPC is trying to reduce to just US$100 per device, will be given out to school children throughout Peru for use over the next nine months as part of the trial. Currently, the XO costs around $200 each to build.

Kids and their teachers in the country will use the laptops as part of efforts to introduce more technology into classrooms in Peru, including Microsoft's Student Innovation Suite of software, which includes Microsoft Office 2003 as well as Learning Essentials 1.0 for Microsoft Office.

The groups did not say how many laptops would be handed out as part of the trial nor when it would start.

The program puts Peru at the heart of a software controversy that has been raging for years between those who advocate making software and its source code free, such as Linux OS developers, and those who charge for software and keep the development recipes secret, such as Microsoft.

OLPC started out offering the XO with Linux because the OS cost nothing and organizers believed it made the device run more efficiently. Some open source software advocates hoped the XO would spread the use of Linux and the open source philosophy to the 5 billion people living without computers in the developing world.

Microsoft also wants to capture the next 5 billion people for its future market potential.

The decision to put Windows on the laptops came about because officials in some countries, such as Egypt, feared a non-Windows laptop would ill prepare students for the real world, in which Microsoft software dominates.

OLPC ultimately decided to ignore the controversy and follow its mission of delivering laptops to kids in developing nations to help ensure they don't get left out of the global computing revolution.

The group now offers XO laptops with either Linux or Windows XP. Within the next few months, laptops armed with both operating systems will be available.

OLPC was started by professors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is led by Nicholas Negroponte.

Microsoft launched a company program a few years ago called Unlimited Potential, with a similar goal of spreading computing throughout the developing world. Microsoft hopes to introduce technology to one billion more people by 2015.

IDG News Service

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Close

On Twitter now

olpc

Powered by Twitter
You are logged in | Sign out
Sign in and post to Twitter

What are you thinking?

Cancel Tweet sent

On Twitter now

Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
peer-to-peer

Esther Schindler
If the comments are ugly, the code is ugly

claird
SVG a graphics format for 21st century

pasmith
Take Chrome OS for a test spin

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Solaris Tip: Have Your Files Changed Since Installation?

sjvn
64-bits of protection?

jfruh
Android fragments vs. the iPhone monolith

mikelgan
What Gizmodo missed about the Pro WX Wireless USB disk drive

 

Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace