Microsoft is working on a version of Windows XP for One Laptop Per Child’s new XO computers, a Microsoft executive announced on a company blog Wednesday. And according to a Wall Street Journal article, the company will start testing the new software with XO laptops in the U.S., India, and Romania.
“We are hard at work on the project here,” wrote James Utzschneider, general manager for marketing and communications for Redmond’s Unlimited Potential group, which focuses on emerging opportunities in the developing world. “Between Microsoft employees and third-party contractors that we have brought into the effort, we have over 40 engineers working full-time on the port,” he said.
Contrary to statements by OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte that “Windows already runs on XO,” Microsoft doesn’t plan to complete the port until “mid-2008 at the earliest,” Utzschneider said. “In fact, you should not yet assume that Windows on the XO is a done deal,” he said, adding that Redmond hopes to be more definitive within six months.
Windows Sans Hard Drive
Utzschneider detailed several major technical challenges to porting XP to the XO, including the lack of a hard drive, the need to create drivers for the XO’s innovative hardware features, and the fact that the OLPC team was making substantial hardware design changes right up until the machine entered production.
Because the XO comes with just 1 GB of flash memory and no hard drive, Microsoft has been working on how to cram Windows into such a small space. In fact, the team cannot get XP into 1 GB and asked the OLPC to add a slot for an internal SD card that will provide the 2 GB of extra memory needed to run XP. In addition, Microsoft is writing a new BIOS so Windows can boot and run off the SD card.
Microsoft is writing 10…