Bill Hance on 29 Feb 2008 16:09:50 -0800


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Re: [PLUG] OLPC Comments


I bought one thru their G1G1 (give one get one) program
on 12/31 and have yet to receive mine.

It does have a terminal program:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Terminal_Activity

  -Bill



> My dad bought a couple of the OLPC mini-laptops (You buy 2.  You get 1,
> the other is
> donated).  He messed around with it for a while, then sent it to me to
> try.   I was
> not very impressed.   Here are my thoughts on the unit.
>
> - It's fairly small, and looks like a Fisher-Price toy.  Definitely aimed
> at kids.
> - It is amazingly non-intuitive in almost everything about it.  (at least
> to this 50
> year-old kid)
> - I couldn't get the blasted thing open at first.  The latches that keep
> it closed are
> well hidden.
> - It's physically robust, and probably very resistant to being damaged
> through misuse.
> - I couldn't get the networking to connect to my WAP, although it saw lots
> of other
> WAPs in the neighborhood.
> - The Black & White display was small, but very crisp.
> - I couldn't get to a "Linux" prompt.  They've hidden the OS pretty well
> behind the
> custom GUI.
>
>
> The biggest disappointment for me was that I couldn't connect to my
> Wireless Access
> Point.   I have a rather old WAP, but have no trouble connecting to any
> other machine,
> but the OLPC never did see it.  it did see several other Wireless ports in
> my
> neighborhood, but could not connect to them when they were encrypted.   It
> reported
> that it saw lots of "mesh" network points (my WAP may have been one of
> them.  Who
> Knows?), but even tough it said it was "connected" to one of them, I never
> got any
> networking action.   If I could have gotten to a CLI, I might have been
> able to figure
> it out, but the GUI hid every drop of Linux from me.  <sigh>
>
> I thought perhaps I was just missing something since I'm too darn old, but
> my 13
> year-old nerdette daughter got nowhere either.
>
> All in all, a great disappointment.
>
> --
>
>
> Casey Bralla
> Chief Nerd in Residence
> The NerdWorld Organisation
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