Monday, June 09, 2008

OLPC in an Athens CyberCafe

Sitting in the Piel Internet Cafe in Greece someone came up and asked if I was using an OLPC. This illustrates the high level of interest in the project.

I was actually using a Twinhead, which is white and much larger than the OLPC. The OLPC project seems to be changing direction, adopting Microsoft Windows in place of Linux. In contrast the ASUS EEE PC seems to be going from strength to strength, perhaps due to not being burdened by considerations of charity and being simply for-profit.

1 comment:

Jeff Waugh said...

Hi Tom,

OLPC isn't switching to Windows. Microsoft have ported it, so it will be available for particular governments and deployments that request it (those who don't understand the holistic educational value of the complete OLPC project).

OLPC the organisation will continue to work on Open Source and the principles of the organisation have not changed.

Accepting deployments with Windows (dual-booting with the Linux-based platform) allows the project to reach countries that would otherwise simply say no (largely due to ignorance).

Thanks,

- Jeff