OLPC hopes Windows is its sales savior

Representing a major alignment shift, the One Laptop Per Child project announced Thursday it had come to an agreement with Microsoft to put Windows XP on its XO Laptop.

The move would push the cost of the system up, which the company had been trying to reduce. Currently the "$100 laptop" costs about $188 to produce, however with Windows, that price could increase by $18 to $20.

In order to get Windows to run on the device, the group needs to pony up an extra $3 for the operating system itself, and the rest to make hardware adjustments including more memory.

Microsoft has spent more than a year developing a version of Windows for the device, it said.

So far, many countries have pushed back on attempts by OLPC to purchase laptops with its own Linux OS variant called Sugar. Its struggles have held back sales: instead of the several million it expected to ship at this point, only about 600,000 have been sold.

Initial deployments have begun in Afghanistan, Haiti, Mexico, Mongolia, Peru, Rwanda, and Uruguay, as well as in Birmingham, Ala.

OLPC will initially roll out the Windows version XO on a limited basis beginning in June. Eventually, a higher priced dual-boot version, which could boot into either Linux or Windows could be manufactured.

"From the beginning, the goal of OLPC has been to use technology to transform education by bringing connectivity and constructionist learning to the poorest children throughout the world," OLPC's Nicholas Negroponte said. "Today's announcement, coupled with future plans for a dual boot version of the XO laptop, enhances our ability to deliver on this vision."