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Microsoft Flexes Its Muscle |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Monday, 07 May 2007 |
Microsoft looks set to give kids in developing nations access to a new
fitness regime! The news is out that the software company is working
out hard, trying to pump its Windows operating system into the
hand-powered One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO notebook. The irony is that
the revelations come at the same time we find out its current customers
are complaining the latest Windows sucks laptop batteries dry.
It looks like those lucky youngsters will get the chance to build up
some good strong arm muscles if Microsoft manages to prise the Linux
operating system out of the XO and replace it with Windows. The tiny
notebook device is designed to operate in regions where electricity is
unreliable, so it's primary power source is a battery powered by a hand
crank system activated by a pull cord.
That's just a bit of a laugh actually, Microsoft is trying to get the
Windows XP to work on the XO, while it's the company's new Vista
operating system that's helping keep the planet warm.
The operating system Microsoft is having trouble getting
to run on the OLPC XO system is a cut down version of Windows
XP, which according to a Microsoft spokesperson, is proving to be a
challenging piece of code to get running in the less than 2GB of
RAM/storage space
available on the little laptop that could (or at least might).
We won't go into too much detail about what mobilised thinks of
Microsoft's attempts to hijack the OLPC project as a Windows platform
for emerging markets. We have already had our rant for the month about
that very subject and besides, the same Microsoft spokesperson, Will
Poole, head of Microsoft's emerging-markets group, says the company is
only doing it because of customer demand. Microsoft claims foreign governments are all but begging for the device to run Windows.
Meanwhile, according to reports emerging last week, big Microsoft
customers, like Hewlett Packard and Lenovo are complaining that the
latest Windows user interface, Aero, is sucking laptop batteries dry at
a much quicker pace than Window XP.
Apparently it is the snazzy, transparent, interface on Microsoft's new
Windows Vista operating system uses so much graphics processing that
users are having to turn it off when they are using their laptops on
battery power.
The new interface could prove bad news for business, too then as CIOs
are increasingly charged with reducing the electricity consumption
attributed to their IT departments in support of efforts to reduce
global warming.
It was revealed last week,
that global carbon emissions from Information Technology already match
those of high-profile polluter the Aviation industry, matching it with
a 2 per cent contribution to the problem. While much of the focus of
the new has been in the world's data centres where massive growth is
leading to unprecedented heat generation and electricity usage, once a
copy of the power hungry Aero gets on every corporate desktop,
computers could be responsible for an even greater share of the global
warming problem.
Aero might warm the planet faster, but Howard Locker, director of
new technology at Lenovo, doesn't seem to mind because it's "cool and
nice looking".
"It's a little scary," said John Wozniak, who is described in the CNet report as a distinguished technologist
in Hewlett-Packard's notebook engineering department. He was talking
about the amount of work HP is having to do to make Windows Vista an
acceptable choice on laptop computers. But it's a great quote.
It seems the work to be done is being undertaken by a number of big
brand computer manufacturers installing Vista onto mobile systems. Both
HP and Lenovo were cited by the CNet article as having plans t o
develop power management settings that override the pre-scripted one's
that come standard with the operating system.
There are some neat power management features in the new OS, it seems,
better hibernation modes are on example, the problem says HP that the
settings aren't flexible enough.
"They've really made it complex
from a power management standpoint," Wozniak said. "The potential is
there to do some good things, the bad thing is that it comes with the
canned settings...and we didn't like any of them."
Lenovo admits
it plans to do the same. CPU-maker AMD has run across the same problem.
"Vista is consuming more power than Windows XP, but we have been very
focused on introducing more power-efficient technologies," Bahr Mahony,
director of mobile products marketing at AMD told CNet.
The best way to increase the battery performance of the new operating
system is obviously to disable the fancy new Aero interface, which
Microsoft's power management features do when you put it in
"power-saving" profile.
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