Microsoft Demonstrates Windows XP on the XO
Microsoft and the One Laptop Per Child project have announced an agreement to work together on getting Windows XP available on the XO laptop, with trials starting in June 2008, and the RTM date set for August or September. Microsoft also demonstrated Windows XP Professional and Office 2003 running on the XO laptop.
The implementation of Windows XP Professional on the XO laptop is not, in any way, limited or crippled, as the company explains. It's feature-complete, has a battery life of 20 hours, boots in 50 seconds (which is 4 times faster than the original XO Linux implementation), and required a whole load of custom drivers in order for it to work on the XO, which has a 433Mhz AMD Geode processor, 256MB of RAM, and 1GB of Flash storage. Microsoft needed to write drivers for the various pieces of hardware in the XO laptop, and also a new BIOS that would allow Windows XP to be booted off a 2GB Flash card; the 1GB of internal storage of the XO was not enough to house Windows XP Professional and Office 2003.
