Nicholas Negroponte, the man behind the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) programme, has said that Microsoft is putting a lot of effort into getting Windows to work on the devices.

Negroponte said in an email that Microsoft had put serious money and effort into making the XO laptop dual boot.

Users are given the choice between the Sugar Linux operating system written by Red Hat, and a cut down version of Windows.

"Sugar needs a wider basis to run on more Linux platforms and to run under Windows," said Negroponte.

"We have been engaged in discussions with Microsoft for several months to explore a dual-boot version of the XO.

"Some of you have seen what Microsoft developed on their own for the XO. It works well and now needs Sugar on top of it (so to speak)."

Negroponte added that the Sugar system was a good idea, but that there were problems in the implementation that made a dual-boot system attractive. There is no perfect model, he said, so the OLPC project is trying multiple platforms.

"Remember the expression 'perfection is the enemy of good'. We need to reach the most children possible and leverage them as the agents of change. It makes no sense for us to search for the perfect learning model," he said.