Microsoft's engineers working hard on slimmer version of XP for OLPC

Redmond (WA) – Microsoft’s software engineers are “working hard” on a slimmed-down version of Windows XP for the One Laptop Per Child project, but company officials say there is still much work to be done. James Utzschneider, GM of Marketing and Communications of Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential Group, says in his blog that contrary to earlier media reports that XP doesn’t yet run on the OLPC, but adds that his team has been working on the operating system since the beginning of the year.

“It will be mid-2008 at the earliest before we could have a production-quality release,” said Utzschneider. Much of that time will be spent adapting XP to run and boot from an SD card. He also says that engineers will have to develop a new BIOS to allow the computer to boot from flash.

Utzschneider stresses that pricing of the scaled-down XP hasn’t been finalized yet and even adds, “You should not assume that Windows on the XP is a done deal.” However despite the ominous tone of that last sentence, he says that Microsoft is committed to developing a quality port of Windows XP, but that “we still have a lot of work to do to complete the effort.”

You can read Utzschneider’s blog here.