In the case of the second argument -- Sugar as a more appropriate interface -- it may be more a case of "we're going to build what our customers will want, not

In the case of the second argument -- Sugar as a more appropriate interface -- it may be more a case of "we're going to build what our customers will want, not what they think they want". The XO has a screen that is not much larger than other ultra-compact notebooks, but with a resolution on par with full-size notebooks. If you run a standard Linux or Windows, any interface text or icons at the default size will be so small as to be illegible. If you crank up the interface DPI to an appropriate size, however, then you lose a lot of screen real estate to menus, toolbars, and statusbars -- something we take for granted now that we have 20-inch displays (just try using Word in a 640x480 window). What the XO really needs is an interface like a kiosk or mobile device: something easy-to-use that aggressively conserves screen real estate. Sugar fills this role pretty well... the default installs of Linux or XP do not. Windows CE would have been a better choice than XP in this respect (and others), but it would presumably have been more work for Microsoft with less payoff, since CE has relatively few educational activities and doesn't run the "real" version of Office.