XO Laptop - Cold Feet
While waiting for my XO laptop to be shipped, I’ve been reading the posts at the OLPC News Forum. I’ve finally had my fill of unboxing pics, and started focusing on all of the support questions about the laptop’s actual functionality.
One user on the forum posted a very thorough review of the XO laptop, profiled the issue of Write being unable to save documents in the .doc and .odt format properly. Some more searching resulted in little information about a replacement program which would handle either of those formats (or even .rtf). This caused me to have some second thoughts about whether I really wanted to keep the laptop, or try to resell it on eBay and get an Asus eee instead. I was (and still am) fully willing to accept the trade-off of a larger device for the geek-chicness of the XO laptop. But the laptop would have been useless if I couldn’t transport any of the documents to another computer. Although something like Google Docs is theoretically an alternative, it’s useless if I can’t get access to a reliable internet connection (which is often the case when I’m travelling, even to a big city like Toronto).
After agonizing over the issue and tracking some of the auctions on eBay for the XO laptop, I decided to ask the other users if they have tried to open the Write documents in Abiword (Write is a derivative of Abiword). I’m so glad I did that, because I was directed to the problem ticket for that issue, which is supposed to be resolved in the next update for Sugar. A quick survey of the tickets for Write showed that the OLPC development team has been very responsive to all of the issues.
It’s good to know that the developers are working so diligently on future releases of Sugar. The shipping problems were a little scary, but seeing the progress of the software is entirely reassuring.
Tags: olpc, technology, xo laptop
hang in there… wait until it actually comes before passing judgement. If you want it as your everyday machine, well, you might be disappointed. But there are so many cool and intriguing concepts here, that my guess is at minimum, this machine will be a collectors item in 5 years. Don’t sell it on eBay! At least not until its worth a few thousand dollars!
Thank you for this site. I hope it will continue in this vein for a long time to come. Well done! By the way - I found my way here by searching for laptop computer review. When I found your post “XO Laptop - Cold Feet” I was intrigued.
Thanks for the encouragement. I certainly didn’t expect it to be an everyday machine, but was hoping it would be a portable one. At this point, I’m thinking it’ll actually be a learning laptop not only for kids, but for me! From what I’ve seen on the hardware side, it looks like it will be the first laptop I will feel comfortable with taking apart. I’m already considering changing its colour and possibly adding a touch screen, like someone did with the Asus Eee. I don’t expect to be disappointed…when it finally arrives.
It never occurred to me to think of this as a regular laptop
While I may be using mine as a laptop, I know it is part of a global educational program and isn’t intended to be a general purpose computer for adults. The fact that it isn’t is a feature, not a bug
Anyway — thanks for the updates you send. I’m excited to finally get mine when they ship to Canada for the G1G1.
A friend of mine (sandelman.ca) has an EEE PC, and I’ve played with it. General purpose, tiny laptop — underpowered by todays laptop standards, but that is part of the point (under power utilization as well!)
My brother has one as well I believe, but that makes sense as he works at Xandros (The company that does the OS — headquartered in New York, but nearly all of the techs are in Kanata).
I know, I know… it’s not a laptop project
When I bought the XO, I had done so for the portability, much like Fricka. I guess even that was expecting more of it than I should have. But we’ll see what my verdict is when I have it in my hands.
I may end up with an Eee very soon, depending on how impatient I get. Most likely before the month ends…