I've been playing with the OLPC XO for a couple of weeks and understand some of the criticism being at it in this thread. However, I think it's definitely a system that invites exploration and experimentation. The Tam Tam music apps are pretty fun, and if you've got more than one, the mesh networking is cool. Clearly the apps (the whole system actually) seem like they're at a beta level, but there's still lots to play with.
My teenager nephew and niece took a break from Guitar Hero and other XBox games to play with it (which says something), and thought it was fun. But clearly, it's a system that's aimed at young kids with unlimited time and lots of friends with them. Just watching two teenagers showing each other things they were discovering convinced me that this will definitely work in its intended environment. I did find the touchpad to be pretty tweaky, but quickly got the hang of it. It also didn't take me very long to map out the various functions on the keyboard. I guess I'm a bit confused by some of the criticism here though, comparing it to desktop Operating Systems and the kind of software used by Western adults. Using the OLPC XO reminded me a lot more of the great raw computing experiences that I had on Apple IIs in the late 1970s, and I know that I was happy to spend kajillions of hours hacking around on those. If our sophisticated desktop software (not to mention games) are so great, you'd think we'd be churning out a lot more programmers and developers of unique and new things than we are. I think that the raw peer-sharing-and-teaching model of the XO is pretty brilliant. I'll be anxious to see how little computer performs once they begin distributing them in larger numbers. My observations are that kids are far more tenacious and far less judgemental than adults and experts. I also don't think that every kid's experience will be equal, and that's actually one of its benefits. Some will naturally dig deeper and appreciate its open-ended nature. It wouldn't surprise me if twenty to thirty years from now there are some successful people who will say that their first formative experiences on a computer were on the OLPC XO. That's just the sense I get. I know that the race is on now to compete with the OLPC XO with small, inexpensive computers running Windows. I'd say it's all good, but I think that there's some real advantages to having this little Linux system out there. Jim James Leftwich, IDSA CXO - Chief Experience Officer SeeqPod, Inc. Emeryville, California http://www.seeqpod.com Orbit Interaction Palo Alto, California http://www.orbitnet.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=23928 ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
