14 DAY TRIAL // On Monday, Microsoft and the One Laptop Per Child project announced that the first country that would try the XO laptops featuring the Microsoft Windows XP Operating System is Peru. The software giant and OLPC brought the new laptops to Peru as a part of a nine-month pilot program.
The two companies announced that they are still working on determining the size of the trial. Microsoft started the work on porting Windows onto the XO machines quite a while ago. Back in May, the two companies announced that they were ready to start selling a Windows-based model to any interested country.
“We are extremely excited to take part in this historic educational pilot that will benefit school children throughout Peru,” Peru's education minister, Jose Antonio Chang Escobedo, said in a statement. “Integrating technology into our school curriculum will help 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.”
Initially, OLPC was focused on Linux, but the organization turned to a partnership with Microsoft after some countries announced their interest in an XO laptop able to run Windows. The interest showed by OLPC in the Windows Operating System determined some of its members to leave, mainly due to their commitment to the initial orientation of the company.
“This pilot in Peru represents an important milestone in the evolution of One Laptop per Child,” said Charles Kane, president of One Laptop per Child, in a statement. “It demonstrates our ability to collaborate with Microsoft to provide governments a choice of operating system on the XO laptop.”
On the other hand, while working with XO, Microsoft supports other education-oriented computers as well, such as Intel's Classmate PC used in the Bradesco Foundation school in Campinas, Brazil.