Microsoft snubs the OLPC tablet

THE ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD project has said that its upcoming XO-3 tablet will not use a Windows operating system.

OLPC's chairman Nicholas Negroponte has always wanted the Vole to join the party. Last year he said that the organization was urging Microsoft to make a full version of Windows available for the earlier XO-2, which was based on an ARM processor.

The XO-2 was later cancelled and now the XO-3 will also use an ARM chip. Ed McNierney, OLPC's CTO told PC World that it has ruled out loading multiple versions of Windows on the tablet.

He said that OLPC has no evidence that Microsoft will make full-featured Windows 7 available to run on an ARM processor. While ARM chips can run Windows Mobile, Microsoft's next mobile OS Windows Phone 7 is not what OLPC has in mind.

McNierney said the new XO-3 tablet will be a fully functional computing device, not a smartphone or a PDA. Windows Phone 7 is designed for those markets, not for general-purpose computing.

An XO-3 prototype will be displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show early next year running Google's Android OS, Negroponte said in an e-mail. By January 2012, the XO-3 will likely be running a different Linux based operating system.

Current XO laptops run Linux with the Sugar platform, which provides an education-specific user interface.

There's a bit more technical information and a picture of the XO-3 tablet here.