As a Canadian, the winter Olympic games are a big deal to me. Not only are the games being held on home soil in Vancouver, but Canadian athletes are winning gold and both hockey squads are performing at exceptionally high levels.
Also performing well at the Olympics is Microsoft, as all of the computers used at the event run Windows. It's not Windows 7, but rather the ever-lasting Windows XP.
Acer won the contract to provide the computers for the 2010 games and confirmed that it shipped more than 6,000 notebooks and desktops for organizers of the event – all of which pack Windows XP rather than the Windows 7 OS found on all of Acer's retail offerings today.
"It was the operating system requested by VANOC (the Olympic organizing committee) and Atos Origin" (the technology integrator managing the Olympics tech operations), said Todd Olson, who manages Acer's tech work in Vancouver, as quoted by CNet.
Olympic organizers opted to go with Windows XP because Windows 7 was "a bit too new to be used."
So far, Windows XP has been doing exactly what is asked of it, with the only notable computer trouble coming at the hands of a bowl of soup rather than software. The incident came when an Olympics worker went into an excited cheer and spilled soup all over a laptop. The worker then shut off the laptop and later found that it still worked.
Acer offered to replace the machine, but the worker declined a new one as she didn't want to part with a notebook hearty enough to survive a bowl of soup.
