Microsoft Corporation Vice President Will Poole has announced the software giant has made progress in getting a basic version of Windows XP to work on the low-cost One Laptop Per Child Foundation"s laptop that currently runs on rival Linux software."We"re spending a nontrivial amount of money on it. We remain hopeful with our progress to date, we still have significant work ahead to finalize our analysis and testing processes. At the end of the day, there"s no guarantees," said Poole.
The OLPC Foundation, a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, plans to start producing the $188 machines in China next month and eventually manufacture millions a year for elementary school children in developing countries. The laptops were designed specifically to run Linux programs. If the machines run only Linux, Microsoft will lose an opportunity to expose tens of millions of children worldwide to its Windows system. What I"m most interested in, however, is by how much, if at all, would the cost go up?