I played with one of these the other day, and I'm not entirely sure how one could justify $399 for one, even considering you're funding a second one in the purchase price. It's really so slow and confused.. it needs another year in development, and a much lower pricetag.
It has so many great ideas and features, but the keyboard and processor speed are just godawful - if African nations grow up using these, they're going to hail a 1995 PowerBook like a technological revolution.
So in your opinion, this thing needs to be able to play doom in order to make it worth using for any educational purpose it was designed for? As for the educational bit, a machine capable of allowing a child access to porn sites would be more than enough to show that the Mesh Wi-Fi capability is sufficient for most uses (Wireless-Lan in a 1995 laptop?).
Well, no, but a pocket calculator would serve an educational purpose too. All I'm suggesting is that I think the OLPC could offer much more value with a bit more work. Currently the OS is bizarre and half-baked, and various features (like the keyboard) are extremely awkward to use in a way that they shouldn't have to be.
The mesh wifi is fantastically done (the UI for that part is pretty great too) but it's only one part of a rather incoherent whole.
Is the keyboard in standard American QWERTY? I'm just wondering if they've standardized on something that might work better for the nations where that's not the standard?
You mentioned that it's slow, which is something that I think the intended customers would put up with for vastly improved battery life. YMMV.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
SuitCase @ Oct 24th 2007 8:52AM
I played with one of these the other day, and I'm not entirely sure how one could justify $399 for one, even considering you're funding a second one in the purchase price. It's really so slow and confused.. it needs another year in development, and a much lower pricetag.
It has so many great ideas and features, but the keyboard and processor speed are just godawful - if African nations grow up using these, they're going to hail a 1995 PowerBook like a technological revolution.
Bernhard @ Oct 24th 2007 7:36AM
So in your opinion, this thing needs to be able to play doom in order to make it worth using for any educational purpose it was designed for? As for the educational bit, a machine capable of allowing a child access to porn sites would be more than enough to show that the Mesh Wi-Fi capability is sufficient for most uses (Wireless-Lan in a 1995 laptop?).
SuitCase @ Oct 24th 2007 7:42AM
Well, no, but a pocket calculator would serve an educational purpose too. All I'm suggesting is that I think the OLPC could offer much more value with a bit more work. Currently the OS is bizarre and half-baked, and various features (like the keyboard) are extremely awkward to use in a way that they shouldn't have to be.
The mesh wifi is fantastically done (the UI for that part is pretty great too) but it's only one part of a rather incoherent whole.
CapnVan @ Oct 24th 2007 12:08PM
@SuitCase:
Is the keyboard in standard American QWERTY? I'm just wondering if they've standardized on something that might work better for the nations where that's not the standard?
You mentioned that it's slow, which is something that I think the intended customers would put up with for vastly improved battery life. YMMV.
jonouk @ Oct 24th 2007 12:09PM
i bet kids hands are smaller than yours