The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is about to find out whether Microsoft Corp, a rival the nonprofit group once derided, is the solution to its problems in spreading inexpensive portable computers to schoolchildren.
Microsoft and the laptop organization announced on Thursday that the nonprofit’s green-and-white “XO” computers now can run Windows in addition to their homegrown interface, which is built on the open Linux operating system. That had been anticipated for months, but it amounts to a major shift.
Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of OLPC — which aims to produce US$100 computers but now sells them at US$188 — acknowledged that having Windows as an option could reassure education ministers who have hesitated to buy XOs with its new interface, called Sugar. Negroponte had hoped to sell several million laptops by now; instead he has gotten about 600,000 orders.
PHOTO: AP
Beginning in limited runs next month, XO buyers will have the option of computers loaded with or without Windows. Versions with Windows will cost US$18 to US$20 more; US$3 of that is for Windows, and the rest covers hardware adjustments, like an additional memory-card slot, needed to make Windows run.
Soon Negroponte hopes to sell just one kind of machine with a “dual-boot” mode, meaning users would have Windows and Linux and choose which to run each time. Because that will take advantage of a broader hardware redesign, the dual-boot XOs will cost about US$10 more than today’s versions, Negroponte said.
Despite the higher price — and Windows’ inability to take advantage of some key features of the XO — Negroponte said his project would benefit from Microsoft’s strengths in selling and deploying technology.
“I think our goals are dramatically enhanced with Microsoft’s decision and this partnership because we will reach many more children,” he said.
“There are now many more countries prepared to look at the XO and collaborative learning and some of the things we stand for,” he said.
The partnership culminates an odd dance.
Not long after Negroponte first dreamed up the idea of seeding the developing world with US$100 laptops for education, he talked with Microsoft about using a version of Windows on the machines. That seemed to vanish before long, as Microsoft’s Bill Gates and a close partner, Intel Corp chairman Craig Barrett, publicly dismissed the XOs’ scaled-back processing power and small screen.
At first Negroponte wore the criticism as a badge of honor, saying it showed that his little group would upend the laptop market.
“When you have both Intel and Microsoft on your case, you know you’re doing something right,” Negroponte said to cheers at a Linux convention in 2006.
Negroponte had other reasons for pursuing a path separate from Windows. For one, Linux is free. That’s key when you’re trying to make a computer for US$100 Plus, Linux was seen as easier to configure for the XOs’ specific innovations, such as its ultra-low power consumption.
Negroponte and his crew also talked about how the open nature of Linux better suited the project’s vision for “constructivist” learning, with children teaching each other and themselves by tinkering with the computer. Negroponte has said he finds it sad when children learn to use computers mainly as tools for office automation.
“The hundred-dollar laptop is an education project,” he often said. “It’s not a laptop project.”
However, it’s enough of a laptop project that Negroponte is eager to speed XO sales and donations beyond their initial deployments, which include Haiti, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Mongolia and Birmingham, Alabama.
Negroponte’s first big change was to make peace with Intel last year, in hopes of boosting XOs’ technical development and blunting competition from Intel’s Classmate PCs. But the relationship ended after only a few months.
The Microsoft relationship looks sturdier. Microsoft engineers spent the past year customizing a version of Windows that can run on XOs. Even so, XOs running Windows for now can’t use some of the machines’ security features and their built-in “mesh” wireless networking.
Negroponte indicated last month that eventually, Windows could be the sole operating system, with Sugar serving as educational software running on top of it. But he said Thursday he does not envision that happening.
Still, a key question will be whether having Windows on the laptops means children make less use of Sugar, one of the project’s core innovations.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head
RSS