Thursday, October 04, 2007

The XO Laptop

David Pogue in the New York Times writes about the XO Laptop aka One-Laptop-Per-Child, aka the $100 laptop. Laptop With a Mission Widens Its Audience. "The truth is, the XO laptop, now in final testing, is absolutely amazing, and in my limited tests, a total kid magnet. Both the hardware and the software exhibit breakthrough after breakthrough — some of them not available on any other laptop, for $400 or $4,000."

The power usage is low, the screen is great, even in sunlight, and the zero-setup mesh networks are a wonder. Startup is slow, as is switching between apps, but using them is fine. "Incredibly, one keystroke reveals the underlying code of almost any XO program or any Web page. Students can not only study how their favorite programs have been written, but even experiment by making changes. (If they make a mess of things, they can restore the original.)"

No comments: