the $178 laptop

The One Laptop Per Child computer will cost $175 and be capable of running microsoft windows, see here and here.

Here's a painful question: if it had not been adapted to running ms windows, what would the price be? $100?

I vaguely remember reading about a part being included "just for Bill". (If someone could remind me what that was, that would be nice.) But let's assume my memory is playing tricks on me. Maybe the original design indeed isn't possible for $100. Then one could replace parts by cheaper ones and still run Linux on something that does cost $100, the OLPC XO is far above the minimum requirements for Linux. On the other hand, the less powerful the hardware, the more difficult it gets to run ms windows. Okay, windows CE would work, but that's not an improvement over the "Sugar" software in any way. I can't imagine microsoft asking for something as pointless as making the XO capable of running windows CE. It's going to be a diet version of Vista.

Now consider that the Sugar GUI was dumbed down maybe a bit too much, and that it doesn't resemble what those [i]ordering[/i] the laptops expect a computer to behave like. Those are not the children that will use it; they are members of governments, who most likely already have been exposed to ms windows.

Could it mean the majority of XOs will be ordered with windows installed by default? Did the $100 laptop become a $178 laptop, $175 for the laptop plus $3 for the "poor student edition" of ms windows?

Is another opportunity to make the 3rd world start in the right way instead of copying the wrong way of the west wasted? Will all those XO-using students grow up thinking being digitally restricted by DRM is normal, and will they end up paying a lot to microsoft once they can barely afford it? One would hope that if such is the case, the increase in price will make the laptop too expensive...

Say it ain't so, Nicholas.