The olpc XO laptop in my hands
I opened my gifts under the tree today and what do I find? A bright shiny green XO Laptop from, the people over at the OLPC [project (thanks parents!!)
I\ve been giving it a test run and firt thingsyou will notice from my horrible typing is thatthe keyboardtkes a little getting usedto. but then, it wasn’t designed for hands my size was it?
I had some troubles figuring out exactly where the connect section was for my home wi-fi (you have to go out to the neighbourhood view to find it, while there is an indicator of status on the desktop - would have made more sense to put a connect dialogue on the indicator as well as in the neighbourhood if you ask me) I’ve also managed to get the screen into fulll screen mode and am not 100% sure how to get it out of it (a warning or indicator of how to escape fullscreen would have been nice guys) .
The screen is sharp and easy to read (for something this small and at this price) . I have yet to try (find) the other mode for the screen so I can’t comment on that yet.
The speakers and photo quality of the camera are pretty damn good, recording for video it relatively low quality. but that is probably to be expected.
There is an odd bug in the browser, right now there is no caret or cursor to show me where I am typing and the right click context menu doesn’t work (but it does still tell me when my spelling is wrong, I just can’t correct it).
The construction seems fairly solid, I think I expected it to be more rubberized than it is to absorb shocks better, but will do. The buttons on the screen look a little cheap (they don\tfully line up with their holes in the casing) and it seems weird to have the keyboard be dust/spill resistant and covered in this slightly annoying rubber when the screen buttons are so open. It would fit much better if the buttons were more like the keyboard in my opinion.
On the topic of the buttons, having the left arrow keys work like a joystick when the screen is in “tablet” mode would add huge amounts of functionality in my opinion. right now you seem to only be able to scroll up and down, left and right,but not control the cursor (which is still visible, andif it was covering something you would have to un-swivel the screen to move it)
There is no fan, woohoo.
More later. this thing is great 