Beyond Binary

In addition to answering questions about how Microsoft plans to take on its rivals and capture the hearts and devices of consumers, Chairman Bill Gates spoke to CNET News.com on other topics, not all of which fit into Monday's Newsmaker piece. Here are a couple more questions and answers from Gates.

Q: One area that I know is important to you is emerging markets. Do you take away any lessons from Intel's fallout with OLPC (One Laptop Per Child)? I know you said recently that you are going to try and make Windows work on OLPC if you can?
Gates: OLPC hasn't done that well. Emerging markets are growing for PCs, people are doing cheap PCs. We've always believed in cheap PCs. If the hardware were free, we'd be happy. We're about the software. We're in literally over 100 countries with special versions of Windows, including Starter Edition. OLPC is nowhere compared to where we are on this thing. If that form factor, some people want to use that, we'll make sure Windows is available on that.

You guys have looked at both low-cost PCs and shown off a phone that then connects up to a TV to act as a low-cost PC. I think you guys are going into trial with that this year?
Gates: That's called Phone Plus. Our lab in China is doing some very interesting work. That general idea is that as you could walk around with the phone that it could use any big screen that shows up, that's going to be just standard stuff. The phone will be the entry PCs for a lot of people.

The biggest thing in developing markets is the shared PC where you go into the library or the school and you share it. There you want a decent keyboard and a decent machine. We started learning with that, it was five years ago that we rolled out PCs to every library in the United States. We went to Chile, Mexico, Botswana.

Broadband is what's hard. What good is any PC now without broadband or without an Internet connection? It's not worth all that much. When somebody says I am going to XYZ country, ask them what the connectivity strategy is. That's the expensive part. Not the hardware, not the software. It's either the training, the special content, or the broadband.

One of the neat things about the phone-to-display thing is it's got some developing country applications, but I imagine that's something that is interesting from a rich-world perspective.
Gates: You'll have displays, not just TV-type displays. There's no reason the software shouldn't be agile in terms of display format. We're getting that even because the phones themselves, the displays in the phones are going up to a pretty good size. Some of that will be wireless. That's not quite sorted out but it will be over the next year or so.

Microsoft is serious about getting Windows XP to work on One Laptop Per Child's low-cost laptop, but the company still isn't sure it will be able to make a go of it.

In an interview, James Utzschneider, the general manager of Microsoft's emerging market unit, says Microsoft has devoted about 40 employees and contractors to work on its effort.

However, there are plenty of technical hurdles, he said. One of the biggest is the fact that the XO has no hard drive and only 1GB of built-in memory. The company concluded it needed at least 2GB of memory just for Windows and Office, so it convinced the OLPC folks to include an SD slot on the laptop's motherboard.

Microsoft's current plan is to get its low-cost Windows and Office bundle to fit on a 2GB SD card that can be added to the laptop. It also has to write new BIOS software to ensure that the operating system can boot directly from an SD card.

Just to get ready for a planned trial in January, Microsoft must write about 10 different hardware drivers to support things like the XO's special screen, its mesh networking, camera, and other unique features.

"To support all of that takes time," he said, noting that Microsoft has been working with OLPC for a year, but until recently, the software maker only had a handful of machines with which to do its development and testing.

Utzschneider said Microsoft normally wouldn't have even talked about its XO effort this early, but was concerned by statements made by Nicholas Negroponte that suggested Windows was ready to go on the XO.

"We wanted to come out and say flat out that's not the case," Utzschneider said. "Despite all of the rhetoric, we don't think we can have a production version until the second half of 2008."

Only after the trial, Utzschneider said, will Microsoft make a decision of whether it will commit to releasing XP for the device, though it certainly has that as its goal. And even if it does create such a version, it has no plans to allow those taking part in the Give One, Get One program to add Windows to their machine.

"It's clearly our goal to ship a release," Utzschneider said. "But we are not confident that the combination of all of this will work with the quality people would expect with Windows XP running on a laptop.

Microsoft said Wednesday that it is working to develop a version of XP that can run on computers without a hard drive, including the XO computer from One Laptop Per Child.

In a statement, Microsoft said that it will start "limited field trials" of XP running on the OLPC computer in January. If all goes well, Microsoft said it could have XP running on the XO by the second half of next year. However, it cautioned folks in North America, particularly those taking part in the Give One, Get One program, that it has no plans to offer that version of XP to folks in the U.S. or Canada.

"As part of Microsoft Corp.'s Unlimited Potential effort to bring the benefits of technology to the next 5 billion people by transforming education, fostering local innovation, and enabling jobs and opportunity, Microsoft today announced plans to further expand flash-based Windows XP support for low-cost hardware computing devices," the company said in the statement. Microsoft said it will "publish formal design guidelines early next year that will assist flash-based device manufacturers in designing machines that enable a high-quality Windows experience."

Microsoft said that governments that are considering buying the XO laptops should give the software maker a call to learn more about when the new version of XP might be ready, how much it will cost, etc.

I'm talking with someone from Microsoft in a few minutes and hope to have more details.

Given all the interest around One Laptop Per Child's "Give One Get One" program, I've been wondering just where all those laptops that are being donated are actually going.

For those who have been in the dark, the organization is trying to boost its low-cost laptop program through a promotion in which people in the U.S. can pay $399 to donate one of the rugged Linux laptops and also get one for themselves. The program's terms and conditions say little, other than that it will go to a child in a country on the UN's list of least developed countries. But I was wondering whether the laptops would go to people in countries that were already customers of OLPC or prospective customers or countries that had otherwise eschewed the One Laptop Per Child initiative.

This school was the first test deployment site for OLPC's XO laptops.

(Credit: Khaled Hassounah)

An OLPC spokeswoman said that donated laptops would be headed to countries such as Afghanistan, Rwanda, Cambodia, Haiti, and Mongolia--places that generally couldn't afford big laptop giveaways. In general, she said that the donated laptops would help "jump-start" a program in those places, though she said Mongolia and perhaps others on that list might also be eventual customers.

As long as I had her on the phone, I thought I would see if the organization had any response to reports that a Nigerian company is suing OLPC for patent infringement over its keyboard design.

"OLPC is aware of the claims made by Lagos Analysis Corp. (LANCOR) but has not been served with any legal documents related to this," she said. "OLPC has requested that LANCOR identify the patents or copyrights in question, but the company has yet to substantiate its claim against OLPC with any documentation. OLPC has the utmost respect for the rights of intellectual property owners and all the intellectual property used in the XO Laptop is either owned by OLPC or properly licensed."