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Friday, May 16, 2008

Open Sugar & Microsoft: End of OLPC As We Know It?

OM Malik, in a GigaOM post, believes that with OLPC’s Open Sugar platform being adopted for new hardware platforms by Sugar Labs and more importantly, Windows XP going to be available on OLPC machines (Sugar will be ported over to Windows), it is the end of OLPC as we know it.

While Malik thinks a lot of people will disagree with him, I totally agree with him.

After all, the availability of Windows XP on the OLPC does make it different from what the people behind OLPC had set out to do — build a truly open, low-cost connected computing device for kids around the world. A Windows-based OLPC will be no different from the myriad of ultraportables currently available. In fact, it is doubtful if it will be able to compete with the new generation of low-cost Atom-based models.

While the initial OLPC concept was worth supporting, it was unfortunately the project ran into one problem after another from the get-go. It was as much saddled by internal conflicts as by external market trends, specifically the emergence of alternatives for low-cost mobile computing, led by the Asus Eee PC.

Somehow, given all the setbacks, in hindsight, the recent developments was not unexpected.

Source article here.

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