Comments on: The XO Laptop http://blogs.macobserver.com/userfriendly/2008/04/25/the-xo-laptop/ Ted Landau is the founder of MacFixIt. Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:54:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Tim harness http://blogs.macobserver.com/userfriendly/2008/04/25/the-xo-laptop/#comment-715 Tim harness Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:16:35 +0000 http://blogs.macobserver.com/userfriendly/2008/04/25/the-xo-laptop/#comment-715 A little early to call the XO a failure, it will be better, even in it's incomplete state, than 8 or 16-bit machines exhumed from closets, or landfills. By the time old machines were competently refurbished, the XO would look much better in price, and as for building a new machine around an old processor, which one? Which socket? At least a dozen in X86 alone, and PPC is not much better. A new, 500 mhz chip might be less expensive than salvage, and those kids deserve better than that. Apple or M$ could earn a lot of good PR by porting a stripped down OS to the XO and OLPC would have to get over it. A little early to call the XO a failure, it will be better, even in it’s incomplete state, than 8 or 16-bit machines exhumed from closets, or landfills. By the time old machines were competently refurbished, the XO would look much better in price, and as for building a new machine around an old processor, which one? Which socket? At least a dozen in X86 alone, and PPC is not much better. A new, 500 mhz chip might be less expensive than salvage, and those kids deserve better than that. Apple or M$ could earn a lot of good PR by porting a stripped down OS to the XO and OLPC would have to get over it.

]]> By: Charles Martin http://blogs.macobserver.com/userfriendly/2008/04/25/the-xo-laptop/#comment-713 Charles Martin Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:18:24 +0000 http://blogs.macobserver.com/userfriendly/2008/04/25/the-xo-laptop/#comment-713 The XO is a FAILED experiement. There, I said it. We all give it so much more credit than it deserves, because of its noble intention, and (admittedly) because we're trying to compensate for our western biases. But I for one am not blinded. Only as a living prototype that provides some pointers for future development can the XO be considered a success. On every other count, it fails. Worse yet, the laptop proves once and for all that Linux is just not ready for non-geeks, and likely never will be. You can slap a pretty coating on it, but its a very thin mask over the ugly guts. A better effort would have been to harvest older processors (usually the last part of a computer to actually fail, and there are millions of them sitting in landfills that still work perfectly) and fuse them with a simplified version of OS X or Windows, and give that box to the TEACHER. The only part of the puzzle that is missing here is solar-storage large screen device that could show the teacher's laptop output without needing to rely on wall-power. Kids + Laptops + no direction = nothing Teacher + Laptop + projector + screen = learning The XO is a FAILED experiement. There, I said it.

We all give it so much more credit than it deserves, because of its noble intention, and (admittedly) because we’re trying to compensate for our western biases. But I for one am not blinded.

Only as a living prototype that provides some pointers for future development can the XO be considered a success. On every other count, it fails.

Worse yet, the laptop proves once and for all that Linux is just not ready for non-geeks, and likely never will be. You can slap a pretty coating on it, but its a very thin mask over the ugly guts.

A better effort would have been to harvest older processors (usually the last part of a computer to actually fail, and there are millions of them sitting in landfills that still work perfectly) and fuse them with a simplified version of OS X or Windows, and give that box to the TEACHER. The only part of the puzzle that is missing here is solar-storage large screen device that could show the teacher’s laptop output without needing to rely on wall-power.

Kids + Laptops + no direction = nothing
Teacher + Laptop + projector + screen = learning

]]> By: partner http://blogs.macobserver.com/userfriendly/2008/04/25/the-xo-laptop/#comment-686 partner Sat, 26 Apr 2008 01:12:06 +0000 http://blogs.macobserver.com/userfriendly/2008/04/25/the-xo-laptop/#comment-686 The awesome thing about the XO is that it includes the Squeak version of the Smalltalk language! It's a great way to learn to program your computer, and you can write real programs without having to worry about complex Linux APIs, X11, GTK, or other complicated junk. You get the whole system, and the source code, and you can modify it as you go. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Smalltalk_Development_on_XO Ah, well, perhaps I spoke too soon - you do need to invoke some Linux incantations to make Squeak available, but once you do, you're all set. And you can use Etoys out of the box, which is a kid-friendly programming environment. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Etoys The awesome thing about the XO is that it includes the Squeak version of the Smalltalk language! It’s a great way to learn to program your computer, and you can write real programs without having to worry about complex Linux APIs, X11, GTK, or other complicated junk. You get the whole system, and the source code, and you can modify it as you go.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Smalltalk_Development_on_XO

Ah, well, perhaps I spoke too soon - you do need to invoke some Linux incantations to make Squeak available, but once you do, you’re all set.

And you can use Etoys out of the box, which is a kid-friendly programming environment.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Etoys

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