Though Negroponte has taken shots at Microsoft and Intel in the past several years, the OLPC has also hinted its willingness to abandon its ideological opposition to proprietary software such as Windows.

Negroponte "just wants to see lower-cost computers in kids' hands," OLPC board member Michael Evans told Computerworld last April, after Microsoft began to offer Windows and Office for use on conventional PCs for $3 to students in developing countries. "If that means other companies filling this need, he'd still be happy as a clam. Our mission is not to beat Apple, Dell, or Microsoft."

Ironically, Evans is vice-president of corporate development for Red Hat, the Linux vendor whose Fedora version of its Red Hat operating system underpins the XO today.

The space dilemma
Other low-cost ultra-portable laptops, most notably the Asus Eee, are starting to be made available in both Linux and Windows XP flavors.

And earlier this month, Microsoft vowed to keep XP alive for another two years only for low-cost laptops such as the Eee and HP's MiniNote 2133.

But that's not the slimmed-down version of XP that Negroponte told the AP Microsoft had been working on for about a year, apparently with the XO in mind. Instead, for most low-cost laptops, Microsoft is licensing the full Service Pack 2 version of Windows XP Home, which gobbles up 1.1GB of disk space. Moreover, patches and updates such as Service Pack 3 will add about 165MB to XP each year, according to Microsoft (download PDF).

The current XO, meanwhile, comes with only 1GB of storage. That's more than enough for the existing environment, which includes the Sugar GUI and stripped-down versions of Firefox, Fedora, and other open source software. Together they take up only 200MB, leaving 800MB for students' files.

Using only stripped-down versions of open source apps has its downsides. For instance, the XO comes with Gnash, an open source media player, instead of Adobe's Flash player, which is free but not open source.

Gnash is compatible with Flash apps only until version 8, according to OLPC's own online documentation. Many popular childrens' Web sites such as Webkinz.com and Disney.com require Flash 9.0.

Moreover, OLPC's documentation notes that Flash sites often take 1GB of free disk space or more -- again, more than is available.

But to accommodate Flash and/or Windows XP, the OLPC may have to equip the XO with a larger solid-state drive, raising the laptop's price again.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.