Microsoft Role Complicates `$100 Laptop'

Co-Founder and Chairman of the MIT Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nicholas Negroponte shows off the new 'One Hundred Dollar Laptop' during a media conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in this file photo taken Saturday Jan. 28, 2006. One of the most ambitious aspects of the "$100 laptop" project for schoolchildren in developing countries is the machines' open-source software platform, designed to be intuitive to kids. That's why many people were taken aback last week when the founder of the nonprofit laptop project, Nicholas Negroponte, announced that buyers of the machine will be able to add Windows, the proprietary software from Microsoft Corp. that open-source adherents love to despise. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus, File) (Anja Niedringhaus - AP)

Meanwhile, Microsoft recently announced a $3 Windows "starter edition" package for international governments that subsidize student computers.

After Negroponte's comments last week, representatives from his group objected to The Associated Press' description that the nonprofit was "working with" Microsoft so Windows could run on the computers. Spokesmen for the project insisted that Microsoft was acting on its own accord, and that Microsoft got "beta" versions of the XO computers just like a lot of other companies have.

"OLPC has no working relationship with Microsoft nor does Microsoft get any special treatment," said a statement from One Laptop's president for software and development, Walter Bender. "They are just another software company interested in the project. OLPC is aware that Microsoft wants to create a Windows platform for the laptop, but OLPC is not involved in that project in any way."

Certainly, Negroponte's and Poole's differing reports about Windows on XO indicate the camps are not exactly on the same page. But it's unclear whether they are as distant as the public-relations statement would hold.

Negroponte told a Linux convention in April 2006 that he had been discussing with Microsoft how Windows could run on the computers _ which is why he was displeased when Bill Gates pooh-poohed the laptop effort.

More recently, Negroponte has been quoted as saying the laptops got an SD port _ where Secure Digital cards can be inserted, expanding the memory available _ so Windows could work. (Bender contradicted that, saying the SD port was added to provide extra space for photos taken with the computer's camera.)

"It is true that we have been working together," Microsoft's Poole said. "We have been having active, high-level conversations going on two years now."

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