Thread: OLPC xo laptop
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Old 12-20-2007, 01:48 PM
Geoff Harrison Geoff Harrison is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2007
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You'll probably have to be patient. I ordered mine on the first day they offered the program (Nov 12) and it arrived Dec 17. Delivery may improve as production ramps up, but you may still have to wait a while. They have a tentative delivery schedule here.

A few things I've discovered about it, both good and bad:

- I was afraid the screen hinge would be a weak point, but after opening it up to look inside, it's very sturdy.

- For someone used to standard Windows/Mac/Linux environments, it takes a while to get used to the Xo's system. They use a completely different metaphor than the desktop with its focus on applications and files. The Xo interface is centered on 'activities' and collaboration between neighboring machines. In fact, it's hard to appreciate the full scope of the machine when yours is the only one in the area. It needs others nearby to mesh with. It is still usable, though, as a standalone machine connecting via WiFi.

- The underlying Linux system is fully available to anyone who wants to get to it. In fact, it ships with no root password . It relies on bitfrost for security. I haven't looked into that yet, but the first thing I did was install a root password.

- The OS and applications are clearly at a beta level, and some more or less essential features and not implemented yet. For example, the laptop can't suspend, which is a pain because it takes a while to boot. That's expected to be fixed in the next release, early in 08, and they claim that waking from suspend is almost instantaneous.

- It's S-L-O-W. Performance improvements are expected with upcoming releases, but with a 433Mhz Geode, it will never be a screamer. But it's not fair to compare it with a multi-gigahertz, multi-core desktop. As someone pointed out to me, it's a lot faster than no laptop at all.

- The keyboard is very small. Obviously, it's designed for children but it seems to me that they'd have to be toddlers to use it comfortably. My fat fingers may not be the best judges of that, but I think 10 year olds will still find it cramped.

Overall, I like it. It's a good design and its goals are laudable. I hope the OLPC team can achieve their goals and I'm sure the current shortcomings of the software will be addressed quite soon. And if not, it's still a really nice piece of rugged hardware that you could probably load a vanilla linux system onto.
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