The good news is that a group called the Digital Partnership is organizing the distribution of thousands of surplus PCs to developing countries. The bad news is that Microsoft is supplying them with Windows XP and Office XP free of charge.
It’s good that they are finally agreeing to give licenses away to the needy after earlier situations where they tried to prosecute charities for piracy. However, I fear that most of the PCs that are discarded may not be powerful enough to run XP effectively. Alas Microsoft seems to have little interest in actively supporting older computers, most of which are more than powerful enough to run useful applications on earlier versions of the operating system.
If this continues (and I see little sign of change in attitude from MS) this may end up penalising them in the long term as people in countries with older machines will find they just can’t run Microsoft software unless they pirate older versions (since MS won’t sell or support them after a while). It might even encourage developing countries into the Linux camp…
