Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, has announced that they have made progress on its Windows software that will be ran on a low-cost XO laptop computer for poor children.
The company said that they are in the process to adapt a basic version of Windows XP that will be compatible with the rugged small green- and-white XO laptop.
Microsoft Corporate, VP, Will Poole said, “We’re spending a non-trivial amount of money on it. We’re working hard. But we’re still at least a few months away. We’ve made progress.”
After being powered by Windows OS, XO laptop will allow the schoolchild owners to modify the machine’s source code. Hence, you can expect the OLPC laptop to run on both free and open source software.
The $100 laptop, currently priced at $190, currently runs on rival Linux software.
will be interesting to see how MS gets it into the laptops. since the issue is price here, will they offer the XO Win Binary for free? here’s a slashdot disucssion on the same topic.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/26/1344213