It is possible to have several views, simultaneously, about Microsoft. At times it acts as a totally insensitive monster — who else could have let the world suffer with Vista? And, at times, it can be quite sensitive. First there are the truly wonderful charity efforts of Bill and Melinda Gates (and let us not forget Warren Buffett) and then there is the way it donated money to support the Chinese government’s Sichuan earthquake rescue efforts and is now ready to provide training as well as donate PCs and technology classrooms.

The company will donate two fully equipped InfoWagons, open a Partners in Learning (PiL) school, launch a Family Education PC program for rural communities in Miyun county outside Beijing, and provide digital literacy content and training in libraries and iCafés across Xinjiang.

Orlando Ayala, Microsoft senior vice president, Unlimited Potential Group, says these latest rural moves are an extension of the work the company has already been doing in China for many years with its PiL education program and the mobile InfoWagons.

The digital literacy content and training program initiative, a partnership between Microsoft and the Xinjiang government that strives to bring Internet and IT training and education programs to local communities through public libraries and iCafés, is expected to be the first of many across China.

This will be done along with the local PC producer Founder and the Founder Windows PC for Education will have Windows Vista and Windows Live preinstalled, along with new learning software tailored for the Chinese education market. And, yes, that is Bill Gates at the back of the illustration at the top with Hu Jintao front and center.

Very full coverage HERE.
Source: Huliq.com

Nicholas Negroponte made much of his idea that every child should have a computer costing $100. In truth, it has not worked out like that and there was very little possibility that it ever would.

Negroponte is good at selling dreams, visions, concepts. It is when it gets down the nitty-gritty of the details that he starts to lose the plot, becomes less credible and creditable.

There are several serious attacks on him on the Internet mostly based on the fact that the costings behind the idea is wrong. Negroponte is of the mind that if the machine stops working the child can fix it. A thought that does not sit easily with anyone with any experience in this field. The writer’s rule of thumb, based on extensive practical experience, is that you need at least one full time support person for every fifty computers.

Stephen Dukker, CEO of nComputing, which provides virtual desktop solutions for education in the U.S. and in developing countries. He said, ‘We don’t particularly think laptops are a terrible idea; they’re a very good idea for people who can afford them.

‘The real objection to OLPC is that they’re trying to be a PC company without being a PC company. They are pushing back support, integration, deployment onto governments without extensive experience.’ Every OLPC deployment has failed because of post-trial support issues.

Negroponte says the kids will learn how to fix the machines themselves.

Stephen Dukker asks. ‘Who do they notify, how do they get the spare parts? How many employees does OLPC have? As far as we understand, there’s not a single OLPC employee whose job it is to manage the logistics of how do you deploy hundreds of thousands of PCs.’

Bruce Nussbam of Newsweek reported some results of the Nigeria test last year:

Some 40 of the machines have been broken or stolen. The students play games often on their computers rather than follow the class. There are few, if any, technicians available to fix hardware and software problems. The solar panels on the roof of the school are not used because they were not aligned properly. Some of the students accessed pornography through their laptops.

Perhaps most important, the internet connection connection (including a dish) is expensive. The 1.2 m dish and a one watt radio cost $2,500. A 128kbps connection costs $350 a month or $4,200 a year. The OLPCs themselves now cost $188 per.

During the five month trial, the village received the internet connection for free. Now it is on its own–and can’t pay.

Now The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project and Microsoft plan to make both Windows and Linux available on a version of the project’s XO laptop.

Microsoft and OLPC did not specify the price of the dual-boot system.

The availability of Windows on the system will give customers more choice in operating systems and let them use Windows-based educational software and tools.

Nicholas Negroponte said that eventually the goal will be to develop versions of the laptop to run both Linux and Windows, leaving the user to decide which operating system to run when the machine boots up.

The attacks on this program sound slightly bitter and twisted (as possibly does this article) but they are based on experience.

A computer is nothing without extensive support. And schoolchildren are not equipped to give themselves that support.

This is the major problem that has to be attended to before OLPC becomes totally valid.
Source: China View and ZD Net.

Taiwan computer giant ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (ASUS) has recently laid the foundation for a RMB3 billion ($428.6 million) factory in Jianxi Province in the Chinese mainland.

In the preliminary stage the factory in Ji’an city will produce copper wire yarn and computer accessories. It will produce mainboards and assemble notebook computers in the future.

Annual production at the factory is expected to reach RMB10 billion.

ASUS has a global staff of more than 100,000. Revenue for 2007 reached $6.9 billion
The illustration was not chosen for the model — atlthough that helped — but for the new sub-mini Asus which is selling at very low prices and is creating a new market.

The 900 is based around an 8.9in, 1024 x 600 display.

It will contain 1GB of DDR 2 memory and a choice of 12GB or 20GB of solid-state storage, depending on which operating system you opt for. Both capacities are configured as two partitions: one 4GB space and either 8GB or 16GB.

The 20GB model will come with Linux, Asus said, while the 12GB version will be pre-loaded with Windows XP Home Edition.

Source: China View

Microsoft and Founder, China’s second best-selling personal computer, have agreed to pre-install Microsoft’s Windows operating system in PCs. This is described as move to combat widespread Chinese product piracy.

There is no mention that this will also stop Linux getting on the machines as an alternative to Microsoft Vista. None at all.

A joint statement says the agreement with Founder Technology shows ‘the commitment of both companies to protect intellectual property rights’ and promote the growth of China’s information technology market.

Founder will also sell Microsoft keyboards, Webcams and other hardware in more than 500 stores across China.

In March, Microsoft and China’s biggest personal computer maker, Lenovo, agreed to pre-load Microsoft’s tool bar and Web search software on its computers.

Lenovo, the world’s third-largest PC maker is also to load Microsoft’s Windows Live on laptop and desktop computers. This package includes Microsoft’s search service Live Search which competes with Google. All this in the name of preventing software piracy.
Source: China.org.cn

Professor Aaron Schwabach at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego has written a 24-page report that essentially says China, taken as a whole, is not the leading global pirate. When figures are adjusted for population, China’s rates of intellectual property violation are lower than those of many other countries, including the United States.

The report concludes that the problem of movie piracy is more severe in the United States than in China, possibly because of greater broadband access, and more severe still in other countries, including France, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Aaron Schwabach writes: ‘Many who might have been willing to pay 60 cents for a pirated DVD of the mind-numbingly awful conclusion to the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy would have been unwilling to pay $22 for a licensed copy, or $11 per person to see the movie in a theater — or would have demanded their money back if they had.’

Same goes for music. On his figures China’s per capita theft figure is $0.68 while Mexico’s is $6.53.

Elsewhere, Schwabach argues that some of the worst piracy occurs in the West, but escapes media attention ‘because it is online and thus less visible.’

In fact, much of the noise about piracy comes from Microsoft which possibly has much more of a case as far as software in concerned. However, the steps it has taken to constantly check software are working. As is the thought that if shove comes to push you can always switch to Linux.
Source: China Rises

Lenovo, now the world’s No. 3 PC maker, has said it will make laptops preloaded with Novell Suse Linux. The company plans to have the Linux sets on sale by the end of the year.

Bryan Ma, IDC’s Asia-Pacific director of personal systems research, expressed doubt that the latest show of support from PC makers truly reflects a growing Linux fan base in Asia. Instead, Bryan Ma believes there is a portion of users who buy the cheaper Linux sets only to install pirated versions of Microsoft Windows on these systems.

He said, ‘In most of the countries in Asia, save for some like Singapore, pirated software can still be readily found. It’s a trend that’s been going on for a good number of years in the region.’

According to figures from the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the Asia-Pacific average piracy rate, including Australia and Japan, stood at 55%. The BSA also puts out its usual estimated revenue losses due to piracy but these have never been based on reality. The BSA has always worked on the basis that any copy of a pirated program is the equivalent of the retail cost of the equivalent. It ignores the fact that if the pirated copy is not available a free, open source, copy nearly always is.

Bryan Ma was correct when he said: ‘Consumers are very price-sensitive, and may not be as resistant to using pirated software as businesses because there is a lower likelihood of someone doing a spot check on your household.’

This is true but if it comes to the crunch users can, and do, set up equipment totally with open source — free — software. The writer has just bought an Acer on which this is being written. It came with Windows Vista installed which slowed the machine so that it ran like the Dead March from Saul. A legal, proper copy of Windows XP was installed instead which increased the apparent speed threeefold. All, without any exceptions, all of the other software is freeware, Open Source.

This sort of activity has been declared by Steve Balmer of Microsoft as being unAmerican. True. But the writer is not from the United States and the free software frequently does the job much, much better than the proprietary equivalent — this is especially true in virus protection, word processing and graphics programs — and the price is right.

If the BSA managed to stop all pirated software — not likely but assume it is possible — it would be the biggest boost freeware has ever seen. It would not massively increase the sales of over-bloated and over-priced software which is so often the target of piracy.
Source: BusinessWeek

Linux was considered by major software companies as the work of the devil although, in fact, it is the modification of earlier work done by Linus Torvalds, shown in our illustration.

Start with Unix which was first released in 1970. Then, under the GNU free software idea, Minix, a Unix-like system intended for academic use, was released in 1987. Then, in 1991, Linus Torvalds began to work on a replacement for Minix while he was attending the University of Helsinki. This eventually became Linux, a complete, fully functional free operating system.

(In 1992, Torvalds explained how he pronounces the word Linux: ‘li’ is pronounced with a short ee sound: compare prInt, mInImal etc. ‘nux’ is also short, non-diphtong, like in pUt.’)

Which may sound like a load of Linux but, in fact, Linux has always been a great worry to the software houses because it is free as a program (support is different) and works on personal computers.

Now, the world’s leading software and hardware providers such as Oracle, IBM and Intel are rushing to do compatibility testing and quality authentication with China’s local Linux products. If China says it will go with its own variety of Linux then you had better smartly get in step or you will miss out on the biggest potential market in the world. Our second illustration shows Larry Ellison of Oracle spruiking the Oracle Linux which is like Linux but much, much, much better. According to Larry Ellison.

Lu Shouqun, president of the China Open Source Software Promotion Union speaking at the ‘Summit Forum of Open Source action and China’s information industry development’ in Guangzhou said that since the 1990s, an Open Source movement represented by Linux has been springing up vigorously, bringing good development opportunities to China’s software industry.

In recent years the number of national local Linux enterprises has been growing.

According to the 2005 statistics, among the local enterprises, Red Flag Software led the pack with a market share of 32.1%. According to statistics from the China Open Source Software Promotion Union, sales of Linux and associated programs in the Chinese market reached RMB218 million in 2006, up 41% and higher than the international average. (How can a program which is free create turnover and profits? Support and modification and add-on programs.)

Seven million computers in the domestic market were signed up for pre-installation of Linux, making up 35% of the computers in the Chinese market. This probably does not make Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer into a happy chappie. Not at all.
Source: People’s Daily Online