Microsoft Now Part Of The $100 Laptop Team

I’ve blogged about this several other times already:

One Laptop Per Child & The $100 Laptop

$100 Computer Makes Progress

$100 Laptop Now $188

Intel Sabotaged $100 Laptop Project Charity Head Claims

As Computers Go Lean Microsoft Is Feeling The Heat

and

Social Entrepreneurs Take The Risks, Fat Cats Reap Rewards

Well now Microsoft is part of the $100 Laptop team. Is that like making the Big Mac part of  your 1000 calorie diet or what? (In other words, if you only have 1000 calories the Big Mac takes up most of that!)

That’s WHY the $100 laptop didn’t USE Windows… it is too bloated with extra software needed just to run the software. But now he hopes having Windows (which guts the utility of the devices) will make sales more brisk.

Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the laptop project - which aims to produce $100 computers but now sells them at $188 - acknowledged that having Windows as an option could reassure education ministers who have hesitated to buy XOs with its new interface, called Sugar. Negroponte had hoped to sell several million laptops by now; instead he has gotten about 600,000 orders.

You’ve got to wonder if some of these computers are being diverted for governmental use once they have Windows on them and if they ever reach the hands of school children. Think Mugabe and the Myanmar junta to envision the type of creeps who’d snap these up and benefit from a “non profit” and then use them to run their military. That may be why they want something compatible with Windows.

Call me cynical.