OLPC goes with XP - official

In some of the countries this "laptop" will be distributed, $3 is a lot of money.

Mathematical educational software is clearly available to Linux OS, be it dynamic geometry or algebric environments. As for physics and chemistry, I'm not sure.
The real loss is that cool reprogrammable Python-based GUI. People don't realize that programming is maybe much more educational than any other discipline, as it teaches logic and resource management.
Anyway, I really hope that Microsoft will bundle VB6.0 at least to make up for the loss.

Why scrap linux in favour of XP when its free and well supported by an international community that has been actively considering the needs of those for which this kind of computing solution is intended for a couple of years? This seems like a step backwards.

Funny, it still costs over £100 here, perhaps the monopolies commission could look into the reason for the difference!

Excelent background info from an insider:
http://radian.org/notebook/sic-transit-gloria-laptopi

In the off chance these countries actually purchase these for a small percentage of the children in these countries, learning to use Windows will probably end up being more useful to them than Linux. 

Yeah, rant all you want about how great a "Python-based GUI" or the wonderful free command-line programming tools that are available. However, in the end these kids are going to just be using a web browser, word processor, and some document readers which will inevitably have DRM attached to it so us Westerners can pay full price for it. I'm sure the planners forgot to set aside money to even TRAIN the teachers in anything more.

Also, the reason it's only costing $3 more is probably because Microsoft is footing the bill on a lot of these machines since the sugar daddies of this failed initiative bailed on the sinking ship. Now Microsoft can get more on board their platform, and the kids get to actually receive their machines. Win-win I guess.

Really, this OLPC is a pretty stupid idea overall. These families have to pay for schooling, rather than have it universally provided. The money would be better spent to help the children to go to school *at all* rather than some technology for those who are already "well off" within those societies already (comparatively). If they need computers, there are a lot of discarded machines that are more than capable of fulfilling that role.

"The deal is a shot on the arm for the low-cost laptop..."

You mean, a shot in the head...


But you may feel a little sick...

The more Microsoft has to keep making new deals to keep Windows XP going in this way, the more people are going to wonder what exactly is the point of Windows Vista.

Ultimately this is going to hurt Microsoft's profit margins. So it thinks it can offer these markets cheap software to get a foothold now, so it can sell them something more expensive (and more profitable) later on? Get real. Once these customers get used to having things cheap, are they going to willingly pay more later on? Not a chance.

And so Microsoft digs itself into a wonderfully deep hole...

Kiss my shiny, linux a**!!!

Its now official, as of 2008 OLPC was formerly known as One Laptop Per Child.

...It now becomes One License Per Child.

So the original goals are now dead. Mr. Negroponte's intentions are clearer now. It about selling a platform to the developing world, than to actually educate children.

Interestingly, he tried (and failed) to bring an "educational platform" before using the Apple II with the French government backing them...It flopped due to "mismanagement and personality conflicts". (Pretty much the same reasons you'll read about when you hear of key people who've left the OLPC project).

His pathetic excuses of blaming open source "fundamentalists" were clearly intentional misdirection of what was really happening.

Now we'll have a bunch of folks in the developing world growing up on Windows...Thereby securing more future income for Microsoft and dependence of their solutions. This goes perfectly inline with the "get them while they're young" tactic. (commonly used in Western schools by serverely discounting their software licenses).

So essentially, OLPC is dead because of the sudden change in goals.

The 3d world do not need this. MS are chaining them to a technology that will cost them dearly in the future. 

There is a tremendous amount of free software for Linux. That can be used for educational purposes. It is the only logical choice if they truly wanted to educate these children.

Chemistry -- Kalzium
Astronomy -- KStars, Celestia, Stellarium
Math -- Mathematica, Maple

That's just a few examples. There is plenty of educational software for Linux, like the entire KDEedu suite of which Kalzium and KStars are a part, that is either Linux-only or that works with less functionality under XP and doesn't work at all under Vista. 

We all know the bottom line is that OLPC sold out (a long time ago, this is just a symptom) and that M$ gets another vector for giving its crack to the world's youth, but the kids are going to lose out if education is the goal.

If getting them hooked on Redmond's malware early was the goal, good job.

The designers have paid the price of making something too radical. They may well be totally correct but they ignored the realities of our commercial world.

Windows brings nothing to the table. There's talk of "now the machine can run educational software" but people who say that don't really know educational software. A lot of what makes this software special is license enforcement -- educational stuff is usually quite expensive and schools are where people need to copy stuff. From a purely functional perspective it can (and usually is) based around web pages (because it also works the Apple market, two birds with one stone).

This kind of subtlety will be lost on 'decision makers' and its the failure to understand the relationship between these and marketers that have doomed this project. (Along with taking far too long to develop, raising expectations and so on -- Asus is an object model of how to go about this kids of work, OLPC is the example of how *not* to do it!)

I am sure M$ dropped a cheque under the door of OLPC

Linux was/is a perfect choice for a power-limited platform. Linux in almost any distro is perfectly apt at running smoothly with but a quarter of the resources that an XP needs (thankfully, Vista is not even being looked at for this).
So Linux has been dropped in favor of a resource-hog and prices have magically gone from the $180 I heard about two years ago to $3 today.
Some major kickbacks have most certainly been received.
But all that is for naught anyway. Indeed, when a whole generation of Swahilis have been brought up on $3 laptops, do you really think they're going to be willing to pay $450 for just an OS ? And another $1200 for the hardware to run it on ? Plus $700 for Office ?
Nope. They'll take one look at those prices and think "Well, it looks like Son of Vista will have to wait a bit, first I must pay off my mortgage of $120 over the next 20 years".
And they'll probably pirate it if they can.
So MS is basically raising a new generation of pirates. Way to go, Ballmer. You really hate the whole world, don't you ?