Samsung introduced Samsung E590. It is a chic and sexy mobile phone that will be loved and adorned. Samsung E590 is designed by the top designer Jasper Morrison and it is really a concept mobile phone that has finally come to life. Samsung E590 is full…

It was new to me. Although too slow for the super “highway” I was there. I participated, had a voice.

I just hope the laptops don’t smoke like mine did.

I’ll also want to respond to one of Alec’s concerns. I don’t see many people in this discussion holding up technology or the XO as a panacea. The impact of the device will vary from individual to individual, from meaningless to life-changing. Re-read what Albertas said above. Not every student will have that reaction to computers, but for him, it ignited a life-long passion. Without access to some form of technology, he would have never discovered that passion. In the same way we want all students exposed to writing, art, music, science, math and more – not only to learn the basic skills and information, but for each of those students to find their passions. The XO can be a powerful part of any of these content areas, but it can also open up doors for those children for whom technology is their undiscovered talent.

For me the issue remains not whether the OLPC is a great program or whether technology will save the world. I’m simply trying to determine if we can find value in various devices when they don’t live up to our high expectations. I revise my original analogy on clothing to transportation and see if i can better explain my thinking.

We have a variety of forms of transportation from walking to airplanes. I’m wondering if the variety of devices we use can been seen in the same light. Do we recognize that sometimes a 30 year old ten speed bike can be useful or do we reject it because it’s not a car?

That’s all I’m saying. Does a $100 laptop with a relatively slow processor, limited programs serve a purpose either in a wealthy nation or in Africa? I would like to think yes but am afraid we in affluent countries can’t find it value. We throw the 30 year old ten speeds in the dump.

I appreciated Sylvia’s list, but I’d like to pay special attention to her first point “you’re not the customer”. I like this but the OLPC has made assumptions about what “the customer” needs. Did the OLPC really emerge from what these cultures expressed as their needs, or from what the West (or a few people related to OLPC) felt “was best for them”. Beware colonialism, beware technology as panacea.

When I was a teenager (early ’90s), I was into computers. I went to a computer class in a youth center, learned to use a computer, play DOS games, program Basic and Pascal. I bought and studied books about programming, almost religiously read the two Russian computer magazines. But I did not own a computer, even though were not so rare in my environment: 2 out of 12 classmates of mine had a PC at home. I dreamed about having a computer I could program on. I would *kill* for something like XO.

I owned the first machine when I was a second year CS student (1998). It was a 386DX40 with 4 megs of RAM — a system that could easily be 8 years old at the time. It was a lot of fun to learn Linux on it, set up sound, X Window, dial-up networking, UUCP mail, Lithuanian fonts and keyboard, hack on little programs, write HOWTOs about what I figured out.

If the XO laptops will reach their target audience in Africa and South America, I’m sure there will be thousands of kids for whom it will be the biggest and most significant gift in their lives. A passport into our world, gateway into their future.

To jump on Tom Hoffman’s comments, yes we are spoiled. And incredibly self-absorbed. Can’t we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes for five seconds and see that the OLPC design serves needs than our own?

I recently took my XO to a party and gave it to a 11 year old. I had started up the TamTam music maker, thinking that he would like that and I didn’t have time to sit with him. 30 minutes later I came back and he had figured out how to start the word processor and had written a story. He didn’t think it “sucked”, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. His mother told me he “hates” writing and won’t do it for school assignments.

Of course, this doesn’t prove anything about the XO design except that we need to give kids tools that suit their needs in their unique situations, not ours.

Regarding Flash and other un-free software. The OLPC Foundation has a commitment to software freedom, and they won’t ship commercial Flash on their disc image. If I was buying these for the People’s Republic of Tom Hoffman, however, I’d be telling my geeks to get Flash on there, which is trivial, since this is Fedora Linux, Gecko, etc. underneath.

Also, related to the Flash issue, both kids and grownups here have gotten increasingly used to the idea that the web is the computer. This is partly because the web is great technology, but also because the non-web parts of our computer often haven’t kept up. Take your XO with you somewhere you don’t have web connectivity and you have to spend some time fighting boredom by playing with TamTam, EToys and some of the other built in software on the XO. It is good stuff, but you need to spend more than 30 seconds idly poking at it. Also, the collaborative features of the native activities are very important but incompletely implemented. It is a different paradigm for collaboration though that doesn’t require cramming everything through the web.

Also, I have a feeling that a lot of people feel “confused” by features that simply are not implemented or are broken, which is confusing, to be sure, but a different kind of confusing than a design problem.

Lastly, I haven’t actually used my XO much lately, but I don’t feel guilty about it and neither should you. You can come back to it over the course of the next year as more updates come out and the software ripens. There is a ton of room for improvement, and I think it will improve.

Gotta replace that default browser. You’ll be in a Linux-type environment, nothing new for you I’m sure.

I was lucky to be surrounded by XO geeks and gurus in Seattle last weekend: http://tinyurl.com/2shkau

If you REALLY want to push this and start something from square one, try http://xousers.ning.com/

Big proponent of all this technical stuff related to the XO is Tom Hoffman at http://www.tuttlesvc.org

So finding those examples of effective use would be helpful. Can this be organized? Has this collection already started? I’m all for it. But this conversation is far from over

I like Mark’s story. You’ve got the network. It’s the $100 dollar laptop (well not really … but well let that specific go this time.)

Find 100 stories like Marks of successful implementation of the XO in classrooms where it appears learning is happening. Here’s the catch, 50 of those have to be outside of North America and Europe. I am sure the network can find 100 stories out of the millions of these things sold.

Win #1: We have 100 stories of success that we can share with others.
Win #2: I’ll take back my “junk” comment (even though it has not yet found my Airport Extreme network, is extremely slow and unresponsive, etc. etc.).

So stories, not just mentions. And hey, stories in a number of multimedia formats would even be nicer.
What do you think?

What Mark said.

Seriously Mark, thanks for a real live review. You rock. I don’t have Opera, point the way. I followed Sylvia Martinez link to install Skype and felt quite proud of myself. Would love to try Opera if it makes browser better….miss tabbed browsing.

My classroom is full of high end computers (12) and laptops (5). The kids know what a screaming computer is like because they are on one several times a day.

My kids also understand what this computer is about, and why it is here. Eight and nine year olds get it. And of course their teacher makes them blog about their experience on it The link below is to the start of their responses to my assignment. It will lengthen over the next week or so, so check back later, too: http://tinyurl.com/247vdz

ps – I often read through my Bloglines on it when I get to school because it starts and hooks up to our network faster than my Dell laptop … do you have Opera on it yet?

On the other hand, I drive a 1982 Honda Civic. People tell me to dump it. It has a tiny vaccuum leak (the radio’s fine). But I do really like it; it’s not just that my expectations are lower. It gets 42 mpg. And I could give you a long list of technology I miss because things “improved”, starting with my Apple Personal Laserwriter. As a historian of technology, I can tell you that it’s all cyclical; there’s a lot less upswing of “progress” than one would think.

I thought the issue on the XO was the durability and connectivity (the mileage), not the features. Maybe we’re just spoiled by the ideas rather than the products.

Are you saying it could be better? I can’t speak to that because I’m not a programmer or hardware expert. Is it the best product for $100? I don’t know. I haven’t seen better. The other issue is that although I see more lower costs computers coming, the durability, mesh network and other features are specifically designed for third world countries.

I also am hesitant to engage in the “they should be spending money on food or clothing argument”. You can’t help everyone and you can’t criticize people for choosing their charities. Questioning people’s charitable efforts because their is a real or perceived better choice is a dangerous road to go down.

What might be a better way?

I understand the “teach a man to fish” argument but seeing the XO, I would rather see this spent on food and clothing and other forms of education. If OLPC is “successful” it is because it created a new low-end market. Companies are paid. Children and North America get new toys. Children in other “targeted markets” will likely see the least of all benefits.

I’m pessimistic yes, but I guess time will tell. There’s got to be a better way.

It’s like saying, we shouldn’t give our used clothes to the poor because we consider them junk. I still say it’s about perspective and what we could use it for. I get the feeling you see it has zero value. That can’t be right. I’ve been browsing the web fairly easily. 1995 or not, that’s still valuable. What do you expect for $100?

My 3yr old has her own Powerbook and she gets around well on it. She hates the XO. It’s slow, small, and from someone who has learned on a Mac, non-intuitive. Sure it has icons and symbols … but it is non-intuitive in other ways.

I’ve had issues with the OLPC project, but though that at the very least I a good product came out of it. The XO is not a great product. It’s junk. It’s bad enough that we dump our consumerist values on the “third-world”, do we really need to dump our junky products there as well?