The goal of the nonprofit One Laptop per Child project has always been exciting: build a cheap, sturdy laptop and give it to poor children in developing countries to improve their educations. Getting from this idea to reality has been tough, but One Laptop has been making progress. The result is the small, green XO laptop. The machine used the free open-source Linux operating system, which users can modify and customise. Mexico, Peru, and other countries have already ordered 600,000 of the XOs.

One Laptop and Microsoft are going to team up, offering laptops that will have both Linux and Windows. This way, children will be able to swim in the same ocean as most of the computing

world. And Microsoft will be closer to its goal of reaching “the next 1 billion people who are not yet realising the benefits of technology” by 2015. And while One Laptop’s early commitment to open-source software will remain intact because Linux will still be available on its laptops, one of the nonprofit’s executives left because he says he can be more

effective developing open-source educational software outside the organisation. Ultimately, though, One Laptop is not about the adults but the children, and they will benefit. With an

XO they can learn to launch their own computing revolutions.