Students at the Santa Maria Del Rio primary school in Colombia, one of two schools in the country that will serve as a pilot for the Windows version of One Laptop Per Child's XO laptop.
(Credit: Microsoft)Microsoft announced a second country is piloting the use of One Laptop Per Child's XO laptop in conjunction with Windows XP.
The deal, announced with the state government of Cundinamarca, will see the laptops put in two schools, including the Santa Maria Del Rio primary school. That school, which just got its first computer lab, will now get additional PCs with the software training and infrastructure donated by Microsoft and the laptops themselves coming from One Laptop Per Child.
Microsoft announced in September that Peru was the first country to sign up for the Windows-on-XO option.
The Santa Maria Del Rio primary school in Cundinamarca, Colombia.
(Credit: Microsoft)That the Windows version of the OLPC machine is headed to Colombia is not a surprise, given that Microsoft quoted Colombian officials in its initial announcement that it was bringing Windows to the XO laptop.
"Transforming education is a fundamental goal of Microsoft Unlimited Potential, our ambitious effort to bring sustained social and economic opportunity to people who currently do not enjoy the benefits of technology," Microsoft senior VP (and Colombian native) Orlando Ayala said in a statement. "Along with the State of Cundinamarca and OLPC, we are delivering a complete, relevant and affordable educational computing solution to schoolchildren in Colombia that will enhance their learning environment and prepare them for the global workforce."
The One Laptop Per Child effort started as a solidly Linux affair, but the project got a lot of feedback about offering a Windows option from countries that said they believe it's important for students to learn the operating system that dominates in business.
Over time, OLPC hopes to offer a version that can boot in either Linux or Windows, though today countries have to choose one version or the other.
As part of my trip to Colombia and Brazil earlier this year, I had a chance to see what it can mean for a school to get its first computers as well as the power when each student has their own laptop, as was the case at the Bradesco Foundation school in Campinas, Brazil.
I also recently took a look at the Windows version of the XO laptop, and more importantly, had an 8-year-old put it through its paces. Here's a video that includes her thoughts and mine.
Microsoft's Lieneke Schol shows off the XO laptop running Windows to Peru's education minister, Jose Antonio Chang Escobedo
(Credit: Microsoft)Microsoft and the One Laptop Per Child project announced Monday that Peru will be the first country to try out XO laptops running Microsoft Windows as part of a nine-month pilot program.
The companies said they are still trying to determine the size of the trial. Microsoft has been working for some time to port Windows onto the XO devices and the two companies announced in May that OLPC would start selling a Windows-based XO laptop to interested countries.
"We are extremely excited to take part in this historic educational pilot that will benefit school children throughout Peru," Peru's education minister, Jose Antonio Chang Escobedo, said in a statement. "Integrating technology into our school curriculum will help to advance our knowledge economy, improve access to information and will generate opportunities for our students, which, through governmental policies, aims to improve the learning process we are offering our children, as well as closing the digital divide which currently exists between schools in rural and urban areas."
OLPC had initially focused solely on Linux, but began working with Microsoft after a number of countries indicated that they were only interested in the XO if it could run Windows.
"This pilot in Peru represents an important milestone in the evolution of One Laptop per Child," said Charles Kane, president of One Laptop per Child, said in a statement. "It demonstrates our ability to collaborate with Microsoft to provide governments a choice of operating system on the XO laptop."
Microsoft, meanwhile, is working with XO, but has also backed the use of Windows on other education-oriented machines, such as Intel's Classmate PC. (Click here to read about the Bradesco Foundation school in Campinas, Brazil, which is using Windows-based Classmate PCs or here for CNET News' recent Borders of Computing series.)
So, I guess this makes it Two Operating Systems Per Child.
The One Laptop Per Child project and Microsoft announced Thursday that indeed the XO laptop will be available in both Linux and Windows varieties. The companies plan to sell a Windows-powered XO in five or six countries starting next month, with a broader release in August or September.
"We view it as a major opportunity for OLPC to expand and expand in a couple of ways," OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte told CNET News.com in an interview Thursday. "One is to have a broader acceptance in the community and the other is to have more software and software developers available."
Microsoft announced in December that it was working to see if it could get Windows XP up and running on the OLPC devices. To make it work, it needed to get the operating system to boot from an SD card and to create drivers to work with OLPC's unique features, such as its touchpad and e-book reader mode.
Negroponte said the ability to run Windows is a must-have in some countries. For example, he said, Uruguay made it a requirement in its recent solicitation. Even in other countries where Windows is not required, Negroponte said compatibility with the Microsoft operating system still helps give the laptop credibility.
"When I talk to people and tell them we can run Windows, they are very impressed," he said. "You pass a sort of virility test."
Microsoft and OLPC aren't saying which countries they will start selling the Windows-based XO model in first, although a press release quotes an official in Colombia, so I'd bet that will be one of the first.
Meanwhile, Negroponte stressed that he is not giving up on Linux and ultimately aims to deliver machines that can boot into either operating system.
"There's no premeditated plan that one is going to dominate over the other," he said. "Having both is a very powerful option."
Microsoft, meanwhile, said the first XO laptops with Windows that start rolling out in June will not be dual-boot machines. Microsoft executive James Utzschneider said the XO will help broaden the range of educational machines with Windows. Plus, he said, "There are just a lot of people that have fallen in love with that cute little laptop and they've said we want to see Windows on it."
For his part, Negroponte said starting out with Linux was essential. "For us to launch the laptop, we had no choice but to use open source," Negroponte said. "We needed the community. We needed to get (in) there at the OS level to build devices and drivers...to make our point, to make the laptop."
Negroponte is hoping the move to Windows won't cost OLPC the things that made its product unique. The company is aiming to port the XO's "Sugar" interface over to Windows.
"We are in discussion with several third parties," Negroponte said. "I suspect we will have some conclusion next week or the week after."
He added that the 50-person OLPC Foundation itself lacks the resources to tackle the software project. "Plus, we don't have the skill set," he said.
Microsoft and OLPC have both talked about the importance of getting laptops in the hands of children in developing countries, although they have not always talked in the fondest terms about one another's efforts.
"OLPC hasn't done that well," Chairman Bill Gates said in a January interview.
Meanwhile, speaking at a Linux conference in 2006, Negroponte said of working with Linux and AMD rather than Intel and Microsoft: "AMD is our partner, which means Intel is pissing on me. Bill Gates is not pleased either, but if I am annoying Microsoft and Intel then I figure I am doing something right."
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