Wishful Thinking

So a few years back a little organization known as One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) formed with a great idea to get as many laptops to children in developing nations as possible.  It received a fair amount of press and the little white and green notebook with the big X on the front made fans the world around.  However, most Americans  have no idea that the little computer, which looks more like a Fisher Price game than a serious tool, is quite revolutionary.

I got my hands on one yesterday at my Uncle’s house.  Turns out that he had purchased one for his daughter as part of the OLPC Give 1 Get 1 program.  For $399 you pay for one of the laptops to be sent to a developing country and in return you get one for yourself.  I must say I was impressed.

My plan to toy with it was nearly foiled right from the beginning as I had some difficulties in opening the silly thing.  Turns out the locking mechanism to keep the screen down is a little more challenging that I was able to tackle.  That problem though, was one of only a few I encountered.

Once it was turned on it became apparent that this was very different than anything I had ever used before.  The XO-1, as it is called, has no hard drive, no optical drive, nor does it have an antiquated floppy drive, all in an effort to keep power consumption to a minimum.

But for all it doesn’t have it comes with a few things you might not expect.  It has a built in camera and an accompanying microphone, with software that allows you to record short films or take pictures, quite like Apple’s Mac Books.  It comes built wireless internet capable and features three USB ports and jacks for headphones and a microphone.  The screen can rotate 360 degrees and can be positioned over the keyboard to facilitate reading quite like the fancy Amazon Kindle.  The touch pad comes with two flanking areas for use by a stylus and other features include a directional pad and game buttons built right next to the screen.

Once you are done admiring the hardware you want to get going and start to play with it.  So you hit the power button, and then you get confused.  Being a brainwashed idiot that forgot this isn’t your standard Mac or Windows PC I was immediately caught off guard by how quickly it loaded and when  a large X appeared on the screen I thought it was still loading when actually it was ready to go.  I overcame that obstacle fairly quickly and started to fiddle with the software.

The XO-1 comes built with a modified version of Linux.  All of the software on the machine is open-source, a measure by OLPC to cut costs and make it easier for them to build exactly what they wanted.  It has that allows you to write, draw, make annoying sounds to bother your parents, record video, watch your voice as a wave, but perhaps most importantly, it comes with a built in internet browser.

The browser is built from the same platform used to create Mozilla Firefox and is the proper tool for the job.  Accompanied by the ability to connect to the internet through other XO-1s in the vicinity it gives children all over the world unprecedented access to everyone else.

Overall the machine is pretty fantastic.  It does have some shortcomings though.  For one, the keyboard is so tiny that only infants could properly type on it.  Another issue is OLPC partnership with Microsoft.  I assume they did so to get money from the computer giant but bundling the newer computers with Windows seems to be a step in the wrong direction.  [In fact, Apple offered OLPC Mac OS X for free on the machines, but OLPC turned it down because it was not open source software.  The only logical reason to then go back on that and take Windows is Microsoft paid out fairly large.]  Lastly, I had quite a bit of trouble actually connecting to the internet.  I’m not sure if this was a rare occurrence based on where I was, but if I have trouble here it makes me wonder how they plan to get on in Africa.

OLPC has introduced the image of the next model, the XO-XO or XO-2.  It is essentially a folding touchscreen and looks quite like something out of star trek.  With more and more applications being built into web sites the key point I think OLPC needs to focus on is making sure the browser they build in can tackle any web site thrown at it and then the XO becomes all anyone ever needs, be it in the third world or here.  Let’s face it almost anything a layman needs to do on a computer can be done with Google Docs, Flickr, Twitter, Gmail and any of thousands upon thousands of AJAX/java-script based software.  Some built in software is nice, but a powerful browser is the key.  This is evidenced by the building browser war between IE, Firefox & Safari.  I guess you can throw Chrome and Opera in there too.

Good job OLPC, keep up the good work, just ditch Microsoft!