OLPC - Microsoft Using XP - Why Not Vista?

During the past week or so, there have been many articles posted about Microsoft and their efforts to use a slimmed down version of XP to run on the OLPC [One Laptop Per Child] computers. But one question that hasn’t been answered is why Windows XP and not Windows Vista?

I guess one could surmise that Vista is too resource hungry and could not be slimmed down enough to run on the light weight OPLC system. Or maybe that Microsoft doesn’t feel that 3rd world child are worthy of having what the software giant states is their best operating system. What ever the case, Microsoft is playing catch up once again, trying to replace Linux as the operating of choice that OLPC had previously decided to use.

Which brings up some another questions , ones that I have asked before. Why is it that Intel and Microsoft want to ruin a project that originally was designed to bring computing to the have not’s of the world? Why is it that these two money generating machines couldn’t of done this on their own, before the OLPC was formed?

Or is the involvement by Intel and Microsoft going to help further the spread of computers to 3rd world countries?

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

[tags]microsoft, intel, olpc, involvement, computers, linux, 3rd world countries,  [/tags]