[alex_d]

I obviously meant that olpc should run donated windows. Microsoft would definately be up for it. In fact, my university has an agreement to sell windows to us for $6. Yeah $6, and we're not third-world elementary school kids. Microsoft was also significantly involved in OLPC talks, but I don't think they could find the right CPU and the OLPC people probably hate microsoft to begin with.

Regarding learning curve of Linux: I was not speaking precisely. I should have stated that in Linux it's very easy to do something basic like surf the web. Of course Linux also has tremendous depth. However, it's widely recognized that doing intermediate tasks is very difficult. Thus the learning curve is shallow at first but then gets very steep, very quickly. It is not a steady ramp like Windows.

Perhaps "getting information to kids" IS the goal of OLPC. However, I think this goal misses the point. Information can be gotten via books, and although google, wikipedia, and the internet are very helpful, they're not that big an advancement in themselves. The main benefit of computers is to directly boost intelligence as well as to acquire internationally sought-after skills. That is what would build economies.