Photos: A kid-tested XO laptop

An eight-year-old puts the Windows version of the XO laptop through its paces. Folks in the U.S. taking part in the Give One, Get One program will all be getting the Linux version.

By Ilene Hoffman, Contributor Oct. 23, 2008 at 11:27 p.m. PT

1 of 6 Ilene Hoffman/ZDNET

Eight-year-old Ella Taggart, the daughter of a CNET News editor, puts the Windows version of the XO laptop through its paces. Microsoft and One Laptop Per Child have worked together to make Windows an option for emerging markets, though folks in the U.S. taking part in the Give One, Get One program will all be getting the Linux version.

Photos by Ina Fried/CNET News

2 of 6 Ilene Hoffman/ZDNET

Among the built-in programs in the Linux version is this animated speech synthesizer that reads aloud anything typed onto the screen.

Photo by Ina Fried/CNET News

3 of 6 Ilene Hoffman/ZDNET

Ella checks out the Windows and Linux machines side by side.

Photo by Ina Fried/CNET News

4 of 6 Ilene Hoffman/ZDNET

On the Linux machine, users view a graphical display of all available wireless and mesh networks and click on the image of the one they wish to connect to, in this case the public Wi-Fi network here at CNET.

Photo by Ina Fried/CNET News

5 of 6 Ilene Hoffman/ZDNET

Running Windows on the XO is just like Windows on any other small laptop. You can browse wherever you want, even to the "dominant competitor" that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is always talking about.

Photo by James Martin/CNET News

6 of 6 Ilene Hoffman/ZDNET

The kid-friendly programming tool Scratch is one of the few software pieces that exists in the same form on both Windows and Linux versions of the XO laptop.

Photo by James Martin/CNET News

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