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Our Blogs The BeerFiles OLPC Australia: XO targeting education and definitely NO Windows
Our Blogs The BeerFiles OLPC Australia: XO targeting education and definitely NO Windows | OLPC Australia: XO targeting education and definitely NO Windows |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Friday, 09 May 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 4 So through what channels will the XO be sold?"The reason is that the XO is a laptop very much for a child between the ages of 5 and 12. When you put your hands on one, it's absolutely obvious that it's small and made for little hands and it's meant to be used in a collaborative learning environment amongst a group of children. The idea of buying it for your five-year old child doesn't really make a lot of sense. We don't want to message it as a consumer device. "We are going to make it available for enthusiasts and developers, people who will probably be able to contribute to the project and we're working through the models of how we're going to do that at the moment." Then of course is the question that is causing some internal friction within OLPC itself - will the XO be shipped with a version of Windows XP? "The easy answer to that question is that at the moment Windows doesn't exist on the machine," says Waugh. "It is completely irrelevant to the value of what the whole project is all about. OLPC Australia has been set up without that ever being on the agenda. The core principal that's repeated often about the project is that it's an education project not a laptop project. Part of delivering on that idea is the open source platform. The community built around the not only the technology but also the content and the use of the device. There is a community angle that permeates everything on what the device, how it works for kids and that sort of stuff. "I have no idea as to why Windows is regarded as relevant to this and some of the stuff in the press about running Sugar on Windows and things like that - well Windows is just an operating system that doesn't deliver on the vision of OLPC." CONTINUED |
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