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I like this move: The OLPC folks, tired of their message being co-opted by geeks worrying about what operating system to install, have raised the stakes in a new web video.
Today the government of Peru, Microsoft and the OLPC announced the first official pilot of XO laptops running Microsoft Windows. This was expected of course, but it marks the beginning of a major shift away from Sugar / Linux—although both will remain as dual boot options for the foreseeable future. It also represents a major step for Microsoft who stand to gain a strong foothold in the developing world.
From November you'll be able to buy the OLPC in its classic "buy one for the price of two" offer from Amazon, which should be a smoother way of distributing the device than when the OLPC was originally on sale from the source. This new Give 1 Get 1 program will also cover the Windows XP version, now that Microsoft have finalised it, as well as the Sugar OS version. One thing remains unknown: pricing. The previous G1G1 program went to US residents for US$398, but maybe this time it'll be a little closer to the fabled US$100 price tag. [Electronista and BBC]
In November of 2005, Nicholas Negroponte and his OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen travelled to Tunisia for the UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society, where they were able to present a "working" US$100 laptop concept to Kofi Annan, UN secretary general. No longer did the machine rely on that pop-up rear-projection display; it was smaller, made of green plastic, and had a crank for the kids to work—for 10 straight minutes per hour of use—when they had no other access to electricity. It was a vast improvement over that January's pup-tent rear-projection laptop, hampered only by the fact that it was an absolute fake.
We showed you the first footage of an OLPC booting the official Windows XP installation back in June, but now Laptop has given the XP-sporting XO a quick round of testing, and unsurprisingly, things are a bit sluggish. The XO's hardware has gone unchanged for the XP edition, so Windows boots off of an SD card which also packs Office, IE, and other apps. While IE fired up in five seconds, the OS took 1 minute 24 seconds to boot, and no one should be surprised that multitasking on the little guy's 256MB of RAM was not fun. Mesh networking is also not making it to the Windows version, unfortunately, but kids can still dual-boot into the Sugar OS for that. [Laptop]
Wilson caught this limited edition Red OLPC at the company's headquarters near MIT's campus in Cambridge today. The limited edition run of 100 is made for developers working on the dual boot Sugar Linux and Windows XP system, and has specs identical to the regular OLPC, except 2GB of RAM 2GB flash memory—the minimum required for Windows. As you can see, the colour scheme is the inverse of the all-red prototype you may have seen before. There are no plans for a public release, so the closest you'll get to seeing this may be in the gallery below.
Long before the XO Laptop climbed over US$100 and OLPC's name was sullied by infighting (and then redeemed by its dual multi-touchscreen XO2 concept) OLPC founder Nick Negroponte was preaching the gospel of ten-finger multi-touch over the "mouse on Macintosh," which sounds profoundly clunky compared to his vision of interfacing with computers. In this 1984 TED talk, the experience he describes sounds remarkably like the XO-2--over 25 years later, he'll finally build the computer he's always wanted. (And I want too.) The clip is long, but prescient and brilliant--you'll feel smarter afterward. [TED via Mental Floss]
At OLPC's Global Country workshop today, founder Nick Negroponte unveiled the next-gen XO Laptop, and it totally blows the original away. About half XO 1.0's size and more like a foldable book, it does away with the keyboard and trackpad to go totally touchscreen—that's right, dual touchscreens, straight out of the future, like a kid's book in Minority Report. Folded all the way out, the displays work like a single continuous one, for say, a sweet game of pong. Like XO 1.0, the display by Pixel-Qi will look fine indoors or in bright sunlight. Unfortunately, it really is from the future: Due in 2010, they're aiming for US$75 and one-watt power consumption. Update: High-res shots and full press release, and they're calling it XOXO, or XO-2.
In a chat with Laptop Mag about the booming ultra-cheap, ultra-portable laptop market, blustery and beleaguered OLPC founder Nick Negroponte actually manages to keep his cool while dissing his rivals—a laudable feat—and drops a couple of interesting bits: OLPC is still on a trajectory toward a US$50 laptop, and they're planning on launching dual-boot Windows XP machines worldwide. Thems some lofty goals—aside from their epic fail to hit just US$100, XO's crafty designer is only trying to clear $75. Good luck, Nick. [Laptop Mag]
We have all heard about the endless problems OLPC is having with its shipments. However, an email sent to one of our own stated that the production schedule is "still on track" and that the laptop he ordered is expected to be delivered "by the middle or the end of March." This comes despite the fact that the laptop was purchased at the last possible minute. Did anyone else who ordered an XO receive a similar email recently, or is your order still in limbo?
