<OT> OLPC program swings to M$

[Craig White]

On Sat, 2008-05-17 at 21:32 -0500, Tom Poe wrote:
> max wrote:
> > Ric Moore wrote:
> >> http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2008-05-16-microsoft-100-dollar-laptop_N.htm 
> >>
> >>
> >> Kind of a kick in the pants to RH and all of their efforts, by
> >> Negroponte! 
> >
> > It costs more and can't use some of the security features or the mesh 
> > networking.
> >
> > Max
> >
> Dear World:  Microsoft is pleased to announce that it has come to the 
> rescue and provided the first document standard, ooxml, in order to do 
> what the world community and its efforts with odf couldn't do.  Buy our 
> products.  We are also pleased to announce that we have come to the 
> rescue and provided the first really worthwhile OLPC computer that 
> couldn't work before.  You may all bow down, now, and buy our products, 
> not theirs.
----
I'm not sure that this warrants the sarcasm. The fact is that the XO has
been pretty much of a failure so far...it missed the $100 target by a
bunch which probably is why there has been a lot of resistance to sales.
Obviously the sales have been short of what they projected and Microsoft
involvement is curious at best because they have had to beef it up just
to run the embedded Windows XP. If the Asus EEPC is any determinant, it
will also run slower than Linux runs too.

The laptop was never intended to be a Windows type system and thinking
by putting Windows on it is an admission that they failed...the target
was the children of third world countries that had limited to computer
technology so whether it runs Windows or Linux was never really the
issue at all.

And of course, as Max pointed out, there isn't the mesh networking or
Sugar interface which was pretty cool. I'm still trying to figure out
how Microsoft is going to distribute updates into the jungle because
they never get things out the door that work as they are supposed to
anyway.

Craig