Merry Christmas to me, I received my XO laptop yesterday. Yay!
My first impression was a very girlish "It's so cute!". I haven't had
time to explore everything yet, but first impression say it's very well
thought out. It seems to boot fast enough. Although my impatience thinks
it's slow, it's really faster than my Real laptop. Overall feel in
running apps seems consistent with the slowish CPU, but certainly as
fast as they need to be. The load speeds for things like the Web browser
seem on the fast side, probably due to the solid state HDD. There is a
slot on the bottom of the screen panel to plug in an SD card. I don't
know what the max size can be - I think I've heard up to 2 GB.
The desktop interface takes some getting used to as it's nothing like
anything I've used before, but not all that hard to figure out,
especially if you throw out any preconceptions (and prejudices) you have
about how a proper GUI should look and behave. I think I may become fond
of it's efficiency. Naturally, screen real estate is pretty small.
Browsing the OLPC website requires horizontal scrolling.
There are lots of keys on the keyboard which OLPC claims are for "Future
use", but have no function at the moment. In their defense, I think
their planned use is more creative and useful than MS's stupid two keys.
Oh, and don't even try to touch type on this thing - unless you're a
child (Duh!).
It seems ruggedly built. It's very light and for me, easy to hold while
using. The screen has very solid detents to hold it in a few different
tilt angles. Of course it spins around to allow it to be used as a
tablet. There are cursor keys on the body portion so that in this
configuration one can navigate the screen. There is a button dedicated
to switching the screen display's orientation: each time you push the
button, the screen rotates 90 degrees. There is a microphone and camera
built into the front of the screen, each with a little LED above to show
when they are being used. I understand the camera also will do video.
I've yet to try either.
It comes with a wall-wart style charger which will never be confused
with any other such device you own: it's the same green as the XO
itself. I was a little disappointed it doesn't include the hand crank,
but I'm not sure those are available yet.
It does have a few annoyances, which the OLPC devs have promised to fix
after the first of the year - like a somewhat squirrelly touchpad, and
no WPA Wifi support. I did get on the Internet easily, though, thanks to
some anonymous neighbor running an AP by the name of Linksys. Also,
while it has three USB ports, it has no Ethernet port. I guess I'll have
to get a USB Ethernet adapter.
Interestingly, when I opened the box at my in-laws' house, my
mother-in-law was really fascinated by the thing. Normally, she couldn't
care less about computers. This while my father-in-law who is a bit into
computers had little to no interest in it (He actually bought and runs a
retail copy of Vista, so maybe that's consistent).
That's all I have for the moment. I haven't really looked at the apps,
other than the browser, and one of the music programs. I'll definitely
be playing with this thing Christmas day to learn more.
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
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