Vista loses Olympic race

WHILE MICROSOFT'S Vista operating system is being touted by the company as the greatest thing since sliced bread, organisers of the 2008 Olympics are not so sure.

PC company Lenovo, which is supplying masses of computers to the Beijing Organising Committee, does not think the operating system is stable enough. It will be deploying Windows XP instead.

Yang Yuanqing, chairman of Lenovo, miffed the Vole during a briefing in Beijing earlier this month, when he said that the Olympic Games require mature, stable technologies and were not the place to try out something new.

As a result, all the Olympic Games' vital PC-related tasks, including games management systems, the results systems, commentator information systems, and the staff and scheduling systems, will run on XP.

Lenovo have also ruled out any wireless networking among the core systems in a bid to get stability.

The ex-IBM firm, an official sponsor of the games, has delivered 12,000 desktop PCs and 2,000 printers to the organisers in Beijing, in addition to 800 laptops and 700 servers.

A spokesman told the INQ yesterday that Vista would run in the Internet Lounges and in PCs provided for use by the athletes.

But, "the Beijing Organizing Committee is using Windows XP for the Lenovo computing equipment that supports the infrastructure of the Games, such as accreditation, Games Management and scorekeeping," he said. µ