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The One Laptop Per Child project and Microsoft have come together to make the software company's Windows XP operating system available on the OLPC's low-cost laptops, the XO. Sugar, a Linux-based user interface, will also be offered on XO computers. Although OLPC had hoped to ship millions of the low-cost computers to schoolchildren in developing countries by now, to date it has shipped 600,000. The open source-based Sugar graphical user interface OLPC developed for the machines concerned education ministers, according to the organization.
Some major problem with using Windows...
Posted by: FutureDreamz 2008-05-17 22:32:28 In reply to: Walaika Haskins
these computers will probably be the first computer that user has ever, well, used. they will definitely have no idea how to use it, and it will be required to include localized instructions.
First: Windows is a complex and unstable beast for newbies, with all of those 2-3" user guides and troubleshooters that you can pick up from the book store to prove it. If some little African kid picks up one of these for the first time, he will have no idea how to use it, and might not get past the learning stage or figuring out what went wrong to the fun part, and will just leave it alone and go outside to play or help out with work around the village. I have never used Sugar but I believe it has been built from the ground up to have a shallow learning curve and be so simple to use that it is actually fun, let alone that it will be much more reliable or easy to fix if there is a hiccup.
Second: localization. since Sugar is an open-source OS, anyone can create or fix a localized language pack that follows the proper spelling and grammar of that specific area's dialect. Windows, since it is closed source, only can be localized by Microsoft, which will most likely not do every single dialect correctly, but of just the core of that language, which may be incorrect and confusing, but might never be fixed.
First: Windows is a complex and unstable beast for newbies, with all of those 2-3" user guides and troubleshooters that you can pick up from the book store to prove it. If some little African kid picks up one of these for the first time, he will have no idea how to use it, and might not get past the learning stage or figuring out what went wrong to the fun part, and will just leave it alone and go outside to play or help out with work around the village. I have never used Sugar but I believe it has been built from the ground up to have a shallow learning curve and be so simple to use that it is actually fun, let alone that it will be much more reliable or easy to fix if there is a hiccup.
Second: localization. since Sugar is an open-source OS, anyone can create or fix a localized language pack that follows the proper spelling and grammar of that specific area's dialect. Windows, since it is closed source, only can be localized by Microsoft, which will most likely not do every single dialect correctly, but of just the core of that language, which may be incorrect and confusing, but might never be fixed.
