Microsoft Joins One Laptop per Child

The nonprofit organization's alliance with Microsoft will bring Windows XP to the poorest children, and could give OLPC a much-needed boost

Just four months after a messy breakup with tech giant Intel, the One Laptop per Child organization on May 15 announced an alliance with another tech behemoth—Microsoft. The two will make Microsoft's Windows XP operating system available on OLPC's XO laptop, which was designed to help educate the world's poorest children.

The tieup was no surprise. OLPC has long talked about putting a Microsoft operating system on its little green-and-white machine. With Microsoft on board, tens of thousands of educational software applications designed to run on Windows can now be used on the XO, making it more useful in schools and acceptable to government ministries. "This will have a huge impact on the psychology of OLPC. It brings us more into the mainstream of people's minds," says Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC's founder and chairman.

Microsoft says it got involved in the project partly at the urging of education officials in several countries. "A lot of people would like to see Windows running on that cute little green-and-white laptop," says James Utzschneider, general manager of marketing at the Microsoft division that promotes affordable computing in developing nations. He listed Egypt, Guatemala, Romania, and Russia.

Ref: Businessweek