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$100 laptop moves forward

  2. metajabaz
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What an opportunity. Affordable and practical. "By being independent of any specific hardware platform and by remaining dedicated to the principles of free and open source software, the Sugar platform ensures that others can develop diverse interfaces and applications for governments and schools to choose from." All for a $100 bucks. Eat your heart out Steve Jobs.
metajabaz

3 responses // $100 laptop moves forward

  • I think the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project designed this for people living in countries with developing economies.

    They originally started out using free and open source software produced by these Sugar platform guys. Now Micro$oft have got in on the act and are going to offer a cut down version of XP, and the Sugar platform guys are going to take their product and start offering it to other hardware vendors (Asus' eeePC for example).
    lwhi
  • I can see why Microsoft are so keen to add their product onto this since it will likely be one major influence on the IT sector of LEDCs. I just don't see why the Sugar OS can't be as popular as XP on these low end systems. The Linux Kernal has yet to reach its full potential.
    beefcurry
  • Microsoft are being particularly evil, when it comes to low cost computing.

    They obviously want to try and get a hold on this market.

    Because low cost doesn't necessarily mean low power these days, they've worked out that they're able to extend the life of XP by creating a version for this new generation of ultra-portable device.

    But, to discourage this version from being used on more powerful machines they've built in all kinds of limitations. For example the new cutdown version of XP has..

    "an upper screen size limit of 10.2 inches, a core speed cap of 1gigahertz, no more than 1GB of RAM and hard drives no bigger than 80GB"

    This is bad news - because it's also placing a cap on the technology the hardware manufacturer can use in these low cost machines. If they can get 120GB drives cheaper than 80GB in 4 months time... tough, because Microsoft's cut-down XP won't support this.

    There are plenty of Linux distributions out there which are far superior to Windows, get updated regularly and are _free_.

    It's a shame Microsoft have to come along and offer a far worse product which costs far more money.
    lwhi

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