My One Laptop Per Child XO Laptop arrived unexpectedly two days ago, and I've done little more than play around with it so far. I've fired it up, filled in my name, and gotten it briefly on the Internet via Wi-Fi.
Mostly I've marveled at it for the technological achievement that it represents. For $200, there are some amazing breakthroughs in a computing device:
- The overall price - even without achieving the desired $100 price point, it's still a remarkable achievement that a complete (self-contained, including screen, battery, enough memory and storage to be usable out of the box) computing device could be built at all for the ~US$180 price point.
- Three USB ports mean that you can probably adapt it to do nearly anything desired. It might not be the zippiest "server", but you can connect it to Ethernet, external drives, etc.
- Additional storage is easy to the point of trivial with the SD slot; I think you can get SD cards up to 8 GB right now - that's plenty of internal storage and you can access a lot more through a network or external drive if needed.
- Based on Linux, of course. One of the things I intend to do is to mostly use it as a standalone "Linux appliance" and eventually adapt it / "corrupt it" to my particular requirements.
- It's rugged... finally, we have a laptop that we can just chuck into the backpack without extraordinary padding.
- I really like that it "just eats 12 volts Direct Current" for power; that will make it easy to use for my Amateur Radio experiments that I plan with it.
- The ablity to rotate the screen and "tabletize" it is really amazing. It looks to me like it will make a perfectly acceptable eBook reader.
- Keyboard notwithstanding, it's the right size - it's easy to carry, it's light enough and small enough to carry with you most places if you're at all inclined to bring a notebook, backpack, etc.
One immediate conclusion I've come to is that the keyboard is, yes, designed for kid-sized hands, and ruggedness, and there's just no way I'm going to be able to use it for "regular" use; I'm not going to be touch-typing on it at all; my hands are just too, too big. And my finger's muscle memory is just too ingrained to a "regular" keyboard to be able to make the change. I plan to "dock" my XO using external power, possibly a USB Ethernet adapter, and an external keyboard (and mouse).
Another immediate conclusion is that the documentation available, even online, really, really sucks. Yes, there's a Wiki and eventually it's possible to dig out all the relevant information that you need to be able to actually use the XO, but damn, it just shouldn't be that tough to figure out what's where, how you do basic things, etc. I'm going to be in the slightly ridiculous position of having my MacBook Pro open and browsing to a XO-related web page, ferreting out how to do things with the XO and then trying them. Yeah, I know... the obvious has occurred to me too, that I'm a writer, and there's some writing that needs to be done for this thing. I may well do it, since I'll be taking notes anyway...
For example, I know that one of the key design parameters for the XO was that it be a good eBook reader, and while the physical / hardware part of that has been well-accommodated in the XO, I haven't yet seen how you actually invoke eBook software, or even how to browse file storage to find what you want to read... or if you can read just text files (natively) on the XO or it can read (formatted) PDF files.
One of the primary things I want to change about my individual XO is that I'd love to get "regular" Firefox installed on it. The included browser is "OK", but I'm so used to the way Firefox does things now that it really slows me down to use another browser.
Another long-term conclusion that I can foresee is that with the rise of Cheap Small Computers, especially those that run Linux, is that there will be a cottage industry forming of those that are willing to maintain "stock" configurations of open source software for a particular platform. For example, it's not out of the question for me to create a "SteveOS" image for the XO, or other Cheap Small Computers. I'd maintain an image of the software, with enhancements that I think are worth adding to the base OS, I'd write documentation for it, and to some extent, support it (mailing lists, etc.) Yes, I'd charge something for what I do; I'd abide by the relevant Open Source legal requirements - make it available as Open Source, but my support would be on a subscription basis. This possibility is fascinating.
By Steve Stroh
This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).
This article was written on a MacBook Pro using Firefox browser and the native web editor of TypePad; edited and posted via Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA). Today it's free public Wi-Fi acess at Tully's Coffee in Redmond, Washington.
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