The government of Peru, Microsoft, and the OLPC project announced an agreement that would provide Windows XP, Office, and other educational resources on XO laptops. This will make Peru the first country in the world to receive XO laptops with Windows preloaded.
This is the beginning of a nine month pilot project to bring educational software and low-cost computing to classrooms throughout Peru.
“We are extremely excited to take part in this historic educational pilot that will benefit school children throughout Peru,” said José Antonio Chang Escobedo, Minister of Education in Peru. “Integrating technology into our school curriculum will help to advance our knowledge economy, improve access to information and will generate opportunities for our students, which, through governmental policies, aims to improve the learning process we are offering our children, as well as closing the digital divide which currently exists between schools in rural and urban areas.”
I’m not sure what I think about this, the XO laptop was built with Linux in mind and I think that Linux would be good for the world in general if it was more widely used. But, it doesn’t surprise me that many people wanted Windows XP on those laptops, since Windows is the most used OS and all. Diversity would be nice in the market but since the whole point of the OLPC program is to teach children in developing nations how to use computers it would probably be beneficial for them to learn how to use an OS that they would most likely be using when the eventually got a job using one.