One Laptop Per Child News

Sugarize it: Intel Classmate 2

(Guest Writer) no_spam@olpcnews.com — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:39:34 -0500

L. Aaron Kaplan is the founder and an active member of OLPC Austria, where he has, among other projects, ported Sugar to the original Classmate PC.

Finally, finally, finally!! I and a few folks have been living with a secret. And of course I wanted to share this as soon as possible. But some events at work (the famous DNS Bug) kept me massively busy. And since work is - well work - you earn a living from it - it got priority. However this nonetheless does not make the secret any less important nor interesting.

Sweet Sugar!

So, what is it about? What's it about? Hm, let's think... the title says "sugarize it". Sugarize what?

As you probably know, sugarlabs.org became independant from OLPC with Walter Bender starting a new organization to continue the dream of an open source user interface for OLPC and for other laptops.

I have been already "ported" Sugar to the Intel Classmate 1. Back then I was quite disappointed with Intel. I did not do any precise tests but it just felt s.l.o.w.
Also Wayan was ranting against the Classmate 1. I agree - the version 1 was not particularly competitive against the XO in my opinion. But is the Classmate 2?

(tada, enter the culprit...)

Silverthrone CPU next to a Penny

So, well... now I received a Classmate 2 with Atom chipset (no, you can't get them yet as far as I know, but you will soon be able to get one for sure). Actually - the fact the you will indeed be able to get them will already be a remarkable difference compared to OLPC's "you can look but not buy" marketing.

Not only did I get a Classmate 2 from Intel, they were even happy to supply one! This was almost a shock for me - compared to the constant pushing I had to do at OLPC's doors to be allowed to contribute and to be granted some resources. Way to go Intel!

So - again - what can we do with that brand new sample version of the Classmate 2 (Atom based)? Can it compete with the XO? Is the CPU really finally fast and power aware at 2.5 Watts? Uhum...

Sugarizing the Classmate 2

Sugarizing gallery

Since the Classmate came already with Ubuntu 7.10 installed, we had to update it to 8.04 over the wifi network. Wait! Did I just write "over the wifi network"? Yes, actually that worked out of the box. So, some 45 minutes later all packages had downloaded and were installed.

The next step was to install Sugar. One way would be to use a Live CD which in in general is well maintained. We instead chose to install Sugar directly as Debian packages. We simply followed the wiki pages and found that the packages were not 100% up to date. We could have re-build everything from scratch using jhbuild but according to Daniel this would have taken a long time to build. So, we decided to live with the fact that in the version we tried the browse activity did not work correctly. For sure a more recent version will fix this.

Summary: installing Sugar on the Classmate is rather easy. Just follow the instructions.

So! How does it look like? Does everything work?

Classmate 2 sugarized!

Camera: Works. Has a pretty decent resolution. Enough for kids to take pictures of things and share it over the network.
Sleep mode: Works. Some minor issues on resume.
Keyboard: Usable. Still a bit small but you get used to it.
Trackpad: Usable. Could be improved with better driver support so that scrolling works better.
Screen resolution: 1024x600 - usable. I miss the reflective display. There are still some minor bugs with placement of objects in Sugar. Supposedly fixed in newer releases.
Wifi: Yup! works out of the box. Currently some issues with resuming after sleep mode. Can be fixed.
OpenGL: Yup, you bet! Glxgears runs in 580 frames / sec. Totally smooth. Great! All OpenGL linux games run great. Tuxracer, GCompris, all there..
Sound: Works ok
Microphone: Fine!
Skype: Works. Nice to have a faster CPU than the XO
Flash: Of course it works if you have space for a full blown Redhat or Ubuntu as basis below it. Didn't bother to install gnash. This means....
YouTube: Works! This is one killer feature for deployment in classrooms. Believe it or not, but Andreas Trawoeger has been brave to test out the features of the XO (and other computers) in a school in Vienna for half a year now. And this was one of the feature he bitterly missed on the XO. Kids love watching things on YouTube and uploading stuff to the site.
Google Earth: Well, Google Earth was a bit CPU and memory hungry. That one started to get a bit slow.
Overall Speed: Needless to say, 1.6GHz is actually really usable for most things in a classroom.
Green ears: No :(
Battery life: Well, medium. I got 3-4 hours out of it. I guess more is doable with proper ACPI support. I guess you can do more with proper tuning.
Price: >188 USD. Approximately 315 Euros in the EU. That is definitely higher. Does it pay off? Yes.

Collaboration? Mesh?

Yes, you bet! Collaboration between an XO, the Classmate 2 and an HP 2133 worked out of the box. To be fair, we had a wireless access point in between the three devices since OLPC's 802.11s and Intel's 802.11s won't work together out of the box right now. Sigh, I guess that is why we have standards. Hmmm... did you get the head fake? I will leave you to ponder about it.

Subjective summary:

Collaboration works out of the box.

Well, the good and cosy feeling of "helping the world" is not present anymore. The green ears are missing, the sweetness factor is gone.

... But.. Hey! On the other hand: this small device is for the first time totally usable! It is fast, compared to the others. There is a dramatic speed improvement compared to the Classmate 1. Would I buy the Classmate 1 for kids? No. Would I buy the Classmate 2? Yes.

A friend of mine forgot his laptop at home and he was at my place over the weekend. We had an intensive planning session, lots of research on the web. And since he forgot his laptop at home, he used the Classmate 2. His conclusion? "Totally usable. A bit small for adults." But fast enough.

So everything works more or less out of the box! If you have small fingers it might even be usable for adults. Your kids will not look at it and sigh love it and then leave it in a corner. But they will love it because they can actually do things with it. Like adults. I believe what counts is to give kids the possibility to access information that they would not otherwise get access to. With usable tech. Whatever brand. It's an education project, not a laptop project. Right?

Well done Intel! Congratulations. Credits where credits are due. The Classmate 2 is a solid product! The wikipedia entry of the Classmate will have to be rewritten for the Classmate 2.

Tests by: Daniel Jahre, Helga Schmidt, Andreas Trawoeger, Tano Bojankin, L. Aaron Kaplan @ OLPC (Austria)
Text by: L. Aaron Kaplan

No vacation at the OLPC Learning Club

(Christoph Derndorfer) no_spam@olpcnews.com — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:06:12 -0500

While many people use August for going on vacation some stay busy by visiting the MIT Media Lab and OLPC HQ in Cambridge, MA while across the country others get ready for a 14,000 XO deployment in Birmingham, AL. Next Saturday the OLPC Learning Club in Washington, DC will bring these people together to talk about their experiences and plans for the future.

Nortel HQ is an excellent location!

Mike Lee will do a trip report on his recent visit to Cambridge, MA. He might have gotten some really cool toys at the MIT Media Lab but I'm sure he's also got plenty of stories to tell from what's going on at OLPC HQ as people are hyperfocused working towards the 8.2.0 software release. Additionally Anna Schoolfield in Birmingham, AL will join in remotely to give everyone an update on the upcoming deployment of 14,000 XOs there.

If I were still in DC I'd definitely kick myself out of bed early that Saturday to be able to join the meetup!

OLPC Learning Club Holiday Meetup
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008, 10 am to 1 pm
Nortel Networks,
101 Constitution Avenue,
Washington, DC 20001 [Map]

Also check out the OLPC Learning Club DC blog for last minute announcements and more information.

Grassroots MIT Media Lab OLPC Birmingham OLPC Learning Club XO User Group solar panel

OLPC San Francisco: August Meetup this Saturday

(Christoph Derndorfer) no_spam@olpcnews.com — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:37:23 -0500

I just got word that OLPC San Francisco is having their August meetup this Saturday, August 16. Being a big fan of local OLPC user-groups and having attended OLPC-SF's July meetup I can only say that it's really worth kicking yourself out of bed early that one Saturday per month!

Green WiFi in Senegal

This month's guest speaker at the meetup is Bruce Baikie from Green WiFi and his talk will focus on a pilot deployment in Senegal where they're using solar Wi-Fi mesh repeaters.

Under other activities the meeting lists:

We'll have the latest builds of software running on the laptop.
Build a mesh network, share activities, generate crazy ideas.
We also have a schoolserver running build 165 and configured and running complete with active antennae. This allows you to mesh with the server (or your nearest XO) and route to the Internet!
If you need to upgrade your XO's software build, we can do that at the meeting as well.
We also [tentatively] plan to have live CDs that allow many garden-variety laptops to run a 802.11s based mesh. See http://www.open80211s.org/ for more details on running a mesh on non-XO machines!

The official schedule on the meeting's invitation lists:

10am to 11am - Setup and meet and greet/wake up. Plenty of cafes on Market St. Load up!
11am to 12:00 - Bruce Baikie's Talk
12:00 to 2:00pm - Breakout groups

And here are the other details you need to know:

OLPC-SF August Meetup
Saturday, August 16
10:00am - 2:00pm
Room 553, SF State Downtown campus [map]
835 Market St.
San Francisco,CA, 94103

August Meetup OLPC SFSU San Francisco User Group

Another look at Windows XP on the XO

(Christoph Derndorfer) no_spam@olpcnews.com — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:35:28 -0500

It's been almost impossible to not stumble across laptopmag.com's hands-on experience with Windows XP on the XO since the article was published last Tuesday. In case you haven't seen it here's a link to the story called "Exclusive Hands-On With OLPC’s XO Running Windows XP" and the original verdict which read:

Windows XO

On paper, a dual boot XO gives kids the best of both worlds: the somewhat boring, but ubiquitous Microsoft OS and its giant universe of software together with Sugar, which is packed with learning tools for kids. However, our early peek suggests that the XP portion is not ready for primetime, as evidenced by the slow boot time, slow application load time, and trouble with multitasking and streaming media. We hope OLPC can fine tune the performance without increasing the cost.

The reason why I'm saying "original" verdict here is that laptopmag.com's editors put up a note a day or two after the article was originally published, saying that they learnt that the Windows XP they had looked at wasn't a final version. This came after Michael Gartenberg from JupiterResearch blogged about the fact that his XO running Windows XP performed significantly better than what laptopmag reported:

I am finding a totally different experience with performance and load times much different and much better than the Laptops folks are getting.

Apart from this slight confusion the laptopmag.com hands-on contains a couple of interesting pieces of previously unknown information:

We like that you can record video in Windows Movie Maker, just like you can in the Sugar camera program. It looked like you could edit movies in Movie Maker but we cannot imagine that works well with the allotted hardware.

With 'record' being one of the most popular activities on the XO (because which child doesn't like taking photos?) I was always wondering whether Microsoft would provide a stand-alone application for taking photos and videos. Now at least the video part of the question seems to be solved so the question remains which software can be used to capture photos. After accidently stumbling across a totally unrelated review of Microsoft LifeCam VX 5000 earlier today I'm thinking that its software could potentially fit the bill:

...the software's interface is quite stylish and very intuitive, albeit rather basic. Aside from the dashboard, which is switched off by default, there are only four 'buttons'. The first three start/stop video capture or audio recording, and take still pictures. The last one lets you access the folder where these files are stored, which seems to be set to a fixed location...

Otherwise we'll have to wait and see whether 3rd party applications will be made available for that purpose.

Another interesting observation was made with regard to the install size of Windows XP:

Because the onboard storage is too small to accommodate XP, the system boots a slimmed down version of XP off the SD card slot (that is hidden under the screen). When the 4GB SanDisk Extreme SD card was inserted into our test unit it booted right to XP (as you will see in the video below).The 4GB card was about half full (1.81GB) with Windows XP and other Microsoft applications and Firefox. There was about 1.97GB of free space left on the card.

1.81GB seems to be quite a lot for a slimmed-down Windows XP even considering that it comes with a selection of Office 2003 applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook). If I remember correctly already two or three years ago people used tools like nLite to put Windows XP on a diet of only 250~300MB. If this almost 2GB is the standard requirement then the developer's using the red XOs (laptopmag.com calls them orange) that come with 2GB flash-memory aren't going to be too happy. Even with 4GB SD cards being available for as little as $12 in single-quantities (compared to $6 for 2GB SD cards) this adds another couple of bucks per machine when purchasing the Windows XP version of the XO.

Again the aforementioned Michael Gartenberg from JupiterResearch tells a slightly different story because he mentions his sample coming with a 2GB SD card which had about 1GB of available storage capacity left.

Overall I have to say that I'm not really impressed. Having used Windows XP on the Geode LX platform many moons ago I knew what performance to expect (and I actually think it's quite good). It was also quite obvious that neither the Mesh nor collaboration (except for MSN Messenger that is) would be supported. And even though the screen-rotation didn't work when laptopmag tried is this is a trivial issue and I'm sure it will work in the final software versions. Supporting the outstanding display is such a basic requirement that again it was obvious that Microsoft would do it.

So some of the big questions that remain unanswered are:

battery life: How long does an XO with Windows XP run away from the AC outlet?
software-updates: How will children and teachers in schools without internet connectivity be able to get software updates? Will Microsoft also release a specialized version of Windows Server 200x to be used in combination with these XOs?
sharing: Is there a quick and easy way to share files without having to rely on USB thumbdrives?

Note: I'm not suggesting that the current Sugar software is necessarily all that great when it comes to these issues. But there's been an enormous amount of progress in all three areas (and many more) lately and I definitely see things moving into the right direction. With Windows XP on the other hand I don't see any feasable short- or even mid-term solutions when it comes to addressing these challenges.

However, as always the real test will be children and teachers actually using the laptops so it's going to be interesting whether Microsoft's marketing department will release some information about that in the weeks and months ahead.

Microsoft OLPC Windows XP XO laptopmag software

Twenty-three Questions on Technology and Education

(Guest Writer) no_spam@olpcnews.com — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:18:29 -0500

This is the third installment of Walter Bender's “Confessions of a Fundamentalist”: part 1, part 2. Last week Walter posted the third and final part of his thoughts under the title "A page from the Hilbert playbook". He graciously allowed us to re-publish it here:

In 1900, the German mathematician David Hilbert posed 23 problems in mathematics that were very influential to 20th century mathematics. Subsequently, variants of this device has been used to draw attention to additional challenges in mathematics and in other disciplines. While I am no certainly no Hilbert, I use the device here to draw attention to a number of problems—perhaps not as intractable as the Riemann hypothesis—facing the intervention of technology on learning (still in draft form):

David Hilbert in 1912

Computer Science:

(1) How does one build an efficient, scalable, affordable community network? (802.11s is not yet the solution and may never be.) How do we efficiently connect these local networks to the global network?

(2) Are there scalable architectures for software development such that one can reach towards complexity while maintaining a level of simplicity so as to not be unapproachable for the uninitiated? Can these architectures be open to local development and yet, within reason, secure to malware? Can these architectures be reasonably efficient?

(3) Is there a better distributed fully-persistent versioned file system? And a better flash file system?

(4) Are there more efficient means of internationalization and localization? We need to scale these efforts by three orders of magnitude in order to reach every corner of the planet.

(5) Can we design a more symmetric global content distribution system, so that people everywhere are on a more equal footing as both creators and consumers of content?

Engineering:

(6) Can we develop low-power computing and alternative power systems?

(7) Can we develop low-cost computing (and buck industry’s predilection for marketing bigger and faster systems to no purpose)?

(8) Can we build environmentally-robust computing?

Education:

(9) Can we validate methods that lead to fluency, such as “scaffolding” in support of “learning through doing” at scale and across disciplines? (We still have many open questions about learning: How well do we understand mastery? How well do we understand understanding? How do we measure what we value instead of value what we can measure?)

(10) Is school reform possible (in our lifetimes)? Are there systemic approaches to overcoming the systemic barriers to change?

(11) How can we unleash the teacher in the classroom and in each of us?

(12) Are there new tools for collaboration, critique, and meaningful evaluation? (There lessons the education community can learn from the FOSS community.)

(13) How can we engaging the local, regional, and global communities to help? Are there any other ways to scale such that every child has an opportunity for a quality learning experience.

Economics:

(14) What are the best models for the governance of volunteer communities?

(15) Are there new economic models for schooling?

(16) What are the micro-economics of learning? Of support? Of economic development?

(17) Is it possible to validate the hypothesis that learning (coupled with freedom of thought) leads to economic development?

(18) Are there better models of FOSS economic (and technological) impact?

Social Sciences:

(19) How will we cope with a switch in the balance of knowledge and knowledge creation? How does this impact local culture and social norms?

(20) What does it mean for a child to create content from both legal and cultural perspectives?

(21) Who should pay for learning? Is it a basic human right? Is it a means to combat poverty and the other root causes of social unrest?

(22) What “shoulders of giants” should we stand on? What is it that children should learn? Are there any universals? How do children decide whom and what to believe?

(23) How can open-content programs such as Open Courseware be expanded? Should contribution to a knowledge commons be the de rigour for universities?

Learning Learning

These problems are beyond the scope of any one organization—many in fact are by their very nature global. I propose that we establish a “Learning Learning consortium” with a mission to supporting universal access to innovative quality education worldwide. It would engage universities around the world to take action. (We have many “think tanks” but far too few “action tanks”.)

Two universities in Peru are giving students a semester of course credit to spend time in the field in support of their country’s learning initiative. (Pairs of students—one from education and one from engineering—are spending time in schools throughout the most rural regions of the country, observing, supporting, and spreading best practices.) This is but one example of how universities can get involved. We need to invent many more ways, put them into practice, evaluate them, and share the ones that work.

Universities need to use their power to convene—bringing the best and brightest minds to these questions.

Walter Bender was President of OLPC Software and Content until his resignation in April of 2008 and he is now leading the Sugar Labs project. His personal blog can be found at walterbender.org.

23 problems David Hilbert OLPC Walter Bender economics education learning learning technology

Custom XO paint-job. Next stop 44" chrome-rims?

(Christoph Derndorfer) no_spam@olpcnews.com — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:25:31 -0500

Last night I found this great post in our forums where a user called Gerbal describes how he painted his XO. Unlike my motivation for undertaking such a project - impressing the ladies and the geeks at the next user-group meeting or presentation that is - Gerbal did it in anticipation of a trip to South America:

Xzibit would be proud!

I recently purchased an XO off of Ebay. I am quite taken with the little machine. It is a brilliant machine and is perfect for field work in isolated parts of Central America where I intend to work. But I had one problem with it. The colour. Travelling though areas where XOs have been deployed it is probable that carrying an XO may be mistaken as having taken it from a child. Very uncool.

True that! You definitely don't want to be mistaken for one of the guys who stole 66 XOs in Peru back in June.

He describes the process of how he went about painting his XO and gives some advice on which paint to use in case you want to do it yourself. With regard to his comments about the paint potentially coming off over the course of the next few months I remember that back in the good ol' case-modding days people used to apply a layer or two of clear coat once the actual paint was cured.

Thinking about I should still have some cans of paint somewhere in the basement. Maybe I'll spend my next weekend making my own red XO?

Gerbal OLPC XO forums modding paint rims tuning

OLPC gaining momentum in India?!

(Christoph Derndorfer) no_spam@olpcnews.com — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:48:50 -0500

To describe India’s relationship with OLPC as “rocky” would almost be an understatement. Back in 2006 for example the Indian Ministry of Education was very critical of the project and called it "pedagogically suspect". Later that year some Indian organizations came together and announced their work on a “$10 laptop”.

XOs also popular in India

Then suddenly in autumn of 2007 the first information about a small pilot-site in Khairat became available which was soon followed by quite an extensive report from the school which appeared on the OLPC wiki.

Now in July there’s been a number of new developments which all indicate that OLPC is gaining some significant momentum in India. First in mid-July it was announced that XOs bundled with CDMA modems are expected to hit retail stores later in the year. Additionally OLPC India’s page on wiki.laptop.org now mentions an additional 5 deployments going on at the moment.

The biggest sign of things to come was included in the latest community-news update which includes an invitation to the OLPC India Day which will take place in Mumbai on August 4.

Mr. Nicholas Negroponte founder and chairman of the One Laptop Per Child non-profit assosociation will be in India to share with us his vision for the world with the XO laptop and formally launch the National level initiative in India. (emphasis mine)

The following day OLPC’s Chief Learning Architect David Cavallo will hold a day-long Learning Workshop which is aimed at

Teachers, trainers and content creators, persons nominated from current projects and planned deployments.

Now I don’t know about you but to me this sounds like a traditional Big Bang for a larger-scale implementation project. With more than 350 million people under the age of 14 living in India the target audience is potentially very large indeed. (Just for comparison’s sake: Uruguay’s population in that age group is about 800,000 while Peru’s is about 8,5 million.) Even if India were only able to achieve One Laptop per every 100th child this would still mean a 3,5 million units deployment.

It remains to be seen what happens over the coming weeks and months but the sheer number potentially involved in an OLPC deployment in India is just mind-boggling and we’ll definitely keep a close eye on what’s going on there.

$10 laptop David Cavallo India Mumbai OLPC OLPC India OLPC India Day

Pity the Poor Classmate PC'd Children of Portugal

(Wayan Vota) no_spam@olpcnews.com — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:23:47 -0500

Classmate ain't the XO laptop

This morning, AP bring us news that Portugal pledged 500,000 Classmate PC's for elementary school students, the largest order for Intel's 4P Computing offering to date.

Sadly, I think this is an epic error on the part of the Government of Portugal, for three reasons:

The Classmate PC is ~~a dog~~ improving (see updates in comments)

As much as I love Intel's long-term commitment to a comprehensive relationship between teachers, students, schools and technology through their multi-year, multi-million dollar Intel Teach Program, their hardware response to the XO laptop is lacking.

As we've said before, $5 Billion in Intel R&D and we get the Classmate PC?

Now besides the short battery life, and classless knock-off looks, the reports from USA deployments do not impress. Nor does Uruguay's open bid results: the XO laptop was the clear winner.

The software "choice" is false

If you read the AP article, you may think that this Portugal tender as a proxy for the larger Foss vs. Microsoft battle for 4PC dominance:

Clasmmate PC - Sugarized!

Intel spokeswoman Agnes Kwan said parents of young school children will be able to choose between computers running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system and ones with an open-source Linux operating system

Yet, unless the Portuguese run Sugar on Classmates, the choice is false. Both of the suggested Classmate OS's are about office productivity software, not educational exploration, and have no place in schools.

The shocking loss of autonomy

Worst of all, in my humble opinion, is the subtle announcement that Portugal has just give up all autonomy to make objective technology decisions:

As part of its biggest deal for the Classmate PC to date, Intel said it will serve as technology adviser to Portugal's Ministry of Public Works, Transportation and Communications, which is coordinating the laptop program.

Combine that complete outsourcing of computer systems evaluation with silence on the financial terms of the deal and I'm thinking there is a deal in the works - cheap Classmates now for lucrative future government orders.

Shady deals being a hallmark of Classmate sales to date.

4PC Classmate PC Intel Microsoft Windows Portugal Sugar UI Technology Adviser XO Laptop

Why Give 1 Get 1 is going to be a much harder sale in 2008

(Christoph Derndorfer) no_spam@olpcnews.com — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:02:15 -0500

The other day when I was in Vancouver and using the XO while sitting in a nice café someone started asking me about the machine and the current state of OLPC. When I mentioned that Give 1 Get 1 was going to make a comeback in autumn the person asked me whether I would recommend him donating this time ‘round since he missed out back in December 2007. I have to say that I scrambled for a couple of seconds before being able to give him a real answer.

Don't drink and punch your XO.

Back at the end of last year when people asked me the same question I normally replied “If you want a small laptop, then yes, go for it.” as the alternatives to the XO were severely limited. Of course the omnipresent ASUS eee PC701 was available but to many people the small screen-resolution was a deal-breaker. If they didn’t know about that one already this was my main argument against purchasing the eee PC701 when people asked me about it.

Although it’s also susceptible to gravity the XO’s robustness (unless you throw a hard punch at the screen) is a definite selling point when you plan to bring your laptop along wherever you go. You’d hate to be stuck with a half-broken $1800 machine just because you dropped your laptop from 2 feet like this guy did with his MacBook Air. And while there are quite a number of issues that people ran into the XO is definitely a very capable machine when it comes to accessing the Web, reading an e-book or watching a movie while on-the-go. It certainly beats having to lug around a 15.4” laptop.

Now, in mid-2008, the situation is quite different. Last time I checked there were about 30+ small and (relatively) inexpensive notebooks, now often referred to as 4PCs or netbooks, around. ASUS alone has 7 or 8 different eee PC options out there. Acer, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, MSI, VIA and a whole bunch of other companies have also released similar products. As always they all have their strengths and weaknesses, just like the XO, but the competition is definitely quite fierce.

As an example let me use the soon-to-be available Dell E Classic which will cost $299, have a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of Flash for mass-storage. Even with the XO sporting the awesome display, above mentioned robustness, equal or potentially slightly longer battery-life and the feel-good aspect of donating to a very-worthy cause it’s quite hard to argue against that feature-set, right?

Of course the points mentioned above are mainly relevant to people whose main motivation for donating to OLPC is to get a small laptop for themselves. However a significant number of the donors also participated in G1G1 to get a laptop that’s suitable for their own children. Again, in late 2007 the main argument for the XO would have been that the competing products weren’t designed with children in mind. Plus none of them were able to run Sugar which is definitely one of the most attractive aspects of getting an XO.

While the products mentioned above aren’t necessarily designed with young users in mind most people would agree that children at the age of 10 or 12 will quickly learn how to use them. Also thanks to the work by some dedicated individuals it’s now quite easy to use Sugar on existing Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu installations.

That leaves us with a third group of donors, the ones who want to enable a child in a developing nation to receive a laptop via the Give 1 part of the equation. With many more organizations working on pilots and deployments now compared to the end of 2007 it’s much easier to find efforts worth supporting by directly donating to them.

In the end the overall effect on me is that it’s become quite a bit harder to tell people to do Give 1 Get 1 once it starts again in autumn. Assuming it’s a carbon-copy re-run of last year’s Give 1 Get 1 and the price is again set at $399 there’s now a plethora of other devices and options that I’d recommend people to also consider before making a decision.

4PC ASUS Dell G1G1 Give 1 Get 1 OLPC netbook sales

Windows XO: A Detailed Microsoft XP Video Dissection

(Jon Camfield) no_spam@olpcnews.com — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 12:07:55 -0500

While the press gets all excited about a RTM'ed Windows XO, I'd like to revisit the original XP on XO video one last time.

The future XO laptop OS

Despite the impression that Microsoft "massaged" the Windows XO video let's for the moment presume that the video was simply edited a bit oddly, and that the demo was the state of the art, XP on XO performance.

Did you watch it closely, while taking copious notes about XP on the XO performance? Well, I'm enough of a geek that I did. And the results are not pretty.

James Utzschneider and Bohdan Raciborski walked us through Windows XP on the OLPC XO, showing off a few common tasks - the general OS, recording and playback of audio and video, power management and the ebook mode, and document sharing.

First, you might remember James U's earlier blog entry detailing the difficulties MS had encountered in running XP on the XO, and the limitations we've discussed with the "Unlimited" Potential software pack.

Next, be sure to read James U's blog entry on the Microsoft announcement of Windows XP on the XO laptop from One Laptop Per Child.

Then, watch the Microsoft XP on XO video:

XP on the XO
Microsoft starts with its "good news" that XP boots faster (but not four times faster) than Sugar; (1:05 into the video). Good going, folks. First off, it turns out that XP doesn't boot that much faster, as the scene only shows a boot to user login, not to the full user interface.

Worse, Microsoft had to cram in an SD card to make XP and Office work. The OS (and MS Office as well, I presume) are resident on the SD Card; from James' blog, emphasis added:

As I have posted earlier, we had to write multiple custom drivers and a BIOS to get Windows to boot from an SD card in order to do the Windows port to the XO. This is the initial implementation customers will be able purchase when the product RTMs and will be a "Windows only" XO that Nicholas Negroponte himself has described as running "really fast."

Customers can also choose to buy the existing Linux/Sugar XO. Longer term, the OLPC plans to write a new BIOS and increase the amount of flash storage on the XO to support a "Dual Boot" option that would enable children to use either Linux or Windows on the same machine. This is fine with us as long there continues to be an excellent Windows experience on the XO.

Having the operating system on an SD card makes it really difficult to upgrade to a larger SD card (or replace a broken one), view photos from a camera, or share documents using an SD card instead of a USB key.

Sugar and other Linux versions on the XO do take longer to boot; but once the suspend and hibernation features are completely working (and the current Update.1 Release Candidate has most of it working) -- you'll never need to turn it off, rarely reboot, and it recovers almost instantaneously from sleep, so this to me is a non-issue.

Recording audio
It goes quickly downhill from at 1:36 in - James and Bohdan shows us how to record an audio file on the Windows XO. Remember, in Sugar this means pressing the "Record" activity on the bottom toolbar, selecting "Audio" (it defaults to photos, and the one "Record" activity records anything -- photos, video, or audio!), and pressing record -- done.

In XP, James navigates through 3 sub-menus of the Start Menu (Start-Programs-Accessories-Entertainment, for you following at home with your own XP, because when I think "record this" I think programs, then accessories, then entertainment!). So after finding the Sound Recorder, he then has to muck with the custom audio properties (Stereo sound and normal compression??) before recording finally. Right. That's intuitive.

We wanna sing & dance!

Recording video
At 2:20 he loads up Windows Movie Maker to capture video (again, to do this in Sugar, you'd just change from Audio to Video in the Record activity). Again he mucks with compression/quality settings (1/2 MB bitrate and 30 FPS -- really? I just want to press "record"). It works and has the standard Windows Movie Maker timeline/video editing capabilities.

"Sharing"
Microsoft expects teachers using Windows XOs to have USB thumbdrives (at 3:19) and be ready to pass them around their class to share videos/photos/recordings and such. Heck, I don't even let my thumbdrive leave my sight at work.

With class sizes of over 30, how long will it take for each student to plug a drive in, have it pop up, copy a video to their desktop (again, providing they have any space left over after Windows and Office), and then finding the "Safely Remove" icon in the taskbar, clicking it, and correctly selecting the thummdrive and not the Windows SD card, and then passing it to the next student.

Sharing a video becomes an all-class-session activity, when it should be done through improvements to the mesh and a peercasting video tool. To be fair, outside of shareable activities, the process currently doesn't work much better on the XO (at least without a School Server to host the shared file).

The swank OLPC XO-1 screen

Power
Putting the laptop into the tablet configuration in Windows seems to switch it to the no-backlight screen mode (4:00); which I hope is not automatic if a child wants to, I dunno, read a book at night in a house without any other light source? In no-backlight mode, he claims you can use the laptop for 20 hours, which I find hard to believe, but if Windows isn't supporting the mesh network and therefore the wifi is also turned off, it's remotely possible.

I watched full-screen video with wifi off on a flight recently and it lasted the full duration of the two and a half hour movie, plus another short TV episode, plus plenty of time left at the end to play the Implode activity (my secret XO addiction) before having to turn off all electronics for landing; so in full, CPU-sleeping screen-off mode, it probably could last that long. Maybe Sugar users should turn off wifi and see how long a backlightless Read activity can last?

Wifi
At 4:50 he shows us how to access a wireless network. Now, as a guy who often gets calls from parents, friends, parents of friends and friends of friends trying to connect to a wireless network in XP, I can safely say that configuring wifi on XP is one of the most confusing tasks ever to be standardized.

No mention of support mesh networking, which may mean that the laptops are not connected to even a local network once they leave the access-point connectivity of the school (if there's even good connection at the school; my experience with Jamaican schools built with lots of rebar, cinder blocks, and metal roofing all played havoc with omni-directional wifi ranges).

Security?
Not mentioned in the video of course is the dire need for security software -- anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-malware, anti-phishing and so on that's suddenly very important if you're releasing XP+IE machines to people who haven't developed a callous shell of cynicism and doubt when approached by Nigerian 419 scams, "Your computer is infected" flashing malware banner ads, and the like.

By the time you load all of this up, the low-power computer will slow to a barely-usable crawl. MS Defender may help against some of those; but we're back to adding cruft and cost when we look at anti-virus vendors.

Pinball teaches gravity - right?

Conclusions
Sugar had its faults; no doubt about it; but it was clean and intuitive with a core belief of an "unlimited ceiling" of upward development -- Sugar was an adult bike with many layers of training wheels that could be removed; with lots of integrated paths to help do just that with eToys teaching programming methods and the various puzzles teaching slowly-more-challenging problem solving skills.

Windows is designed against this, with no programming tools built in, and an almost anti-hacker/explorer/fiddler philosophy that goes beyond it merely being "closed source" to putting up impediments to learning any useful skills.

A draft of this entry was originally published at JonCamfield.com

James Utzschneider Microsoft Sugar Ubuntu Unlimited Potential Windows XO XP XP on the XO