Comments on: Microsoft to field test Window-based OLPC XO laptops

By: baash05

baash05 — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:33:34 +0000

I read an article where bill gates said honestly, and perhaps painfully, that OLPC has sold under a million platforms and they are bairly on the radar (paraphrasing) As much as I like the XO, to think they threaten windows in any way is crazy. Same goes for the less then 10% market share that linux/unix has in the OS sphere.
As to foot hold in these markets. I’d love to find someone to take a bet that most of the computers on the desks of the people buying the XO were running something other then windows.
What holds back a sale is that it’s not windows. I’ve told clients point blank that Palm is better then PPC. That they are better in many many ways. (power, memory, speed). “but can they run windows?” was uttered so many times that even palm started putting windows on their hardware. Want kids to get them. Sell them to the policy makers.

By: Ken

Ken — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 20:49:40 +0000

Why wouldn’t they use a reworked Windows CE? (I’m kidding). Windows is probably the worst OS you could use for something like this, with it’s kitchen sink kernel. BSD-great. Linux-even better. Microsoft is just trying to get a foot hold in emerging countries, and to keep Linux from the same (see Nigeria). It’s a pity they chose to disrupt the roll out with this crap, and after all the hard work has been finished.

By: MrDonut

MrDonut — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:46:58 +0000

I would like to ask why Microsoft is reworking XP to work on XO and not Vista. Either it’s a typo or Microsoft believes that XP has a brighter future than Vista? Either way, I congratulate Microsoft on their efforts to build an OS that will run on lightweight hardware.

By: Ole Juul

Ole Juul — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 07:32:05 +0000

First, I’d like to say that Microsoft is showing a distinct lack of class in their dealings with th OLPC. The project is a charity and it is meant to benefit poor people, not shareholders. Shame on them.
Second I’d like to ask what “stripped-down machine” (without an article) means. There’s not much extra stuff on an XO, so what could they take off? The handle? Perhaps the author was just having a bad day, I’ve seen much better writing by him, but the last paragraph needs to be rewritten into proper english so that everybody can understand it.