Also related to EU and the BRICs
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| vainrveenr Sep 17, 2007 3:22 PM EDT |
Perhaps Microsoft would do well to get involved in either the OLPC or its own MS-centric version of something similar. Individual countries within the European Union could currently be much more amenable to considering an Open Source laptop venture such as OLPC, now that Microsoft has lost its appeal of the €497 million ($690 million) fine imposed on the company in the European Court of First Instance (see http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/92816/index.html) Also, individual countries in the BRIC group -- Brazil, Russia, India, and China -- are in the very unique position of not only having more and more monetary/investment clout, but also clout related to strong political connections with poorer Third World-type countries. Microsoft must surely be aware of all this, not only by allowing pirated copies of Windows and Office software to proliferate, but also by trying to gain further inroads for OLPC and its own MS-centric takeoff(s) within the EU and these BRIC-allied countries. |
| flufferbeer Sep 17, 2007 7:20 PM EDT |
How about M$ really out to buy up some of those $200 laptops, throw a Windows CE -like OS -and- a scaled down MS-Office on these that they can upgrade in the future, and then sell these back at a steep discount to the sponsoring countries? |
| Sander_Marechal Sep 17, 2007 9:52 PM EDT |
You mean $400 laptops, right? If they are sold in the west, then they are sold for double price to sponsor the laptops for the 3rd world. So if MS buys 100.000 machines to flash with Windows-CE they will have sponsored an extra 100.000 XO's with Linux shipped to the 3rd world for free :-) |
| jezuch Sep 18, 2007 9:41 AM EDT |
And if a country bought those discounted laptops with Windows CE, they'd soon regret it - power-sucking, not children-oriented, network-disabled (they'd have to develop or "steal" the mesh networking code), etc. I don't worry about that, really... |
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