[lug] OLPC Will Ship With Windows XP

[Lori Reed]

The opinions expressed here are those of Charlie Sorrel, and not my own.
-L

The $100 Linux Laptop is now a $200 Windows XP box. The XO (or OLPC) 
will eventually come as a dual boot machine, loaded with both XP and the 
weird icon-only XO flavor of Linux, called Sugar. First though, an 
XP-only version will ship, and will cost an extra $20 over the 
ever-fluctuating price of the original. $3 of this will go to Microsoft 
and the rest will take care of hardware changes to accommodate the new OS.

It seems that the developing world wants exactly the same as the rest of 
us: Windows. A janky, kid-friendly operating system might be fine in 
theory, but when it comes to shifting units, governments want something 
a little more useful, something that will fit in with what people 
perceive as a real computer. OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte:

     "There are now many more countries prepared to look at the XO and 
collaborative learning and some of the things we stand for."

We can't help thinking that the OLPC should have shipped with something 
a little more conventional from the beginning. Something like Ubuntu Linux.

Found at:
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/05/olpc-will-ship.html

The image at the link shows the BSOD on an XO. :)

Lori