Julianna Yau’s blog

Jason has uploaded the video from Wednesday’s talk: One Laptop Per Child - Yaacov Iland. It’s a long video (about an hour and a half), and you may want to adjust the settings so you’re viewing it at the original size (unless you’re curious about how Yaacov looks pixillated). I apologize for the coughing—that was me, fighting the last of a lingering cold.

Yaacov’s insights were fair and well-presented. Although most of the criticisms OLPC endured recently were due to their dispatch problems, Yaacov digs deeper, asking what problems OLPC was trying to address, what engineering challenges had to be overcome, and what other challenges were still unsolved. It seems the biggest issues yet to be overcome are training for teachers, accessibility to related technologies (e.g. an internet connection, electricity), and language and cultural barriers. For an organization which has said it’s an education project, not a laptop project, I find it odd that they have made so little headway with those challenges in comparison to the work they have completed on the XO laptop itself.

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Today, after some bizarre yet unsurprising shipping oddities, I received my exchanged XO laptop. Somehow, Brightstar (or whoever was in charge of shipping XOs as a result of RMA requests) thought it was okay to ship my XO with a street name without a house number. Or maybe they thought I lived on the entire street? In any event, I called FedEx, got the address fixed, and they came back today. Of course, because no signature was required, they left the box on my doorstep. I was luckily planning to intercept the package around the time they delivered it, so I was already on my way homewards and was able to rescue it before a curious passer-by claimed it.

My first impressions of the XO had been near scathing, due mostly to a defective keyboard. The keyboard on this second unit is noticeably better, but also still noticeably more sticky than the one on my Eee or Toshiba. It does force me to type with my wrists up, both because it is the only way I can get close to my standard typing speed and because it doesn’t cause my wrists to accidentally trigger the touch-pad. The space-bar is still unusually difficult to register.

This XO seems to have shipped with an updated version of Sugar. I have not yet browsed the forums and wikis to learn how I can confirm that, but I do notice that the interface is a bit different from the first time. One major improvement is that clicking a “Browse’ button on a website will actually trigger a browse window (which I couldn’t get it to do last time).

Some other noteworthy items:

• the default system time does not match my actual time zone, and seems to be about 16hrs ahead (I will need to figure out how to fix that)
• still no right-click functionality, even with a USB mouse
• the SD slot seems to have more resistance on this machine than my first one
• image browsing is clunky, at best (must go to the journal, view the list of items, then launch each image in a browser)

The keyboard is still the most difficult thing for me to deal with. At Yaacov Iland’s talk yesterday I met Jason Shim, a fellow G1G1 donor who had already received his laptop. I brought my Eee with me, and upon using it, Jason remarked on how much better the Eee’s keyboard is compared to the XO. I’m glad it’s not just me! A summary of the presentation will come in a few days (probably after Jason uploads the video he took).

If it was almost love at first sight with my Eee, my relationship with my XO is definitely one which demonstrates persistence and determination.

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A while ago, others wrote about the conundrum of the concept of “intellectual property” (Cory Doctorow and Mike Masnick; Russell McOrmond has also been concerned about the use of the phrase as jargon for some time). Many of the lectures presented by the Centre for Innovation Law & Policy have also touched on the link between creativity and ownership of that creativity.

I’ve been mulling over these thoughts, and am trying to make some sense of why and whether physical output is fundamentally different from intellectual output. It is difficult to penetrate this because it suffers from similar philosophical challenges as the link between the mind and body.

Issues of copyright are seeming to develop more shades of grey in the differentiation between the ownership of a thing and the copying of an idea. Copyright law generally prevents ideas from receiving protection, but whether it’s a question of basketball, wanting to be someone’s boyfriend, toilet paper or other silliness, people are pushing the limits of what can be protected by copyright and what can be owned.

The problem is perhaps how easily ideas can now be stolen from creative persons to be made into the fortunes of the business-savvy. One of the recent examples of this is OLPC’s XO laptop, which is threatening to be another Atari 400 or Commodore 64. Although it would be difficult to successfully argue that the concept of an inexpensive and small portable computing device was “stolen” or “belonged” to the pioneers at OLPC, their literal inability to deliver the XO is suspected to be a factor in the departure of some of the major minds behind the project.

Of course, an idea on its own is almost completely useless. Whether it is political, philosophical, artistic, technological, musical or otherwise, an idea which never gets past the conceptual stage is little more than exercise for your brain. But how do we find a balance between rewarding the birth of new ideas and allowing people to stand on the shoulder of giants?

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Jesse Brown asks Mary Lou Jepsen some tough questions about OLPC’s struggles, her departure and her new project, pixel qi. The podcast can be downloaded here, and if you don’t want to hear about Zeitgeist the Movie, skip to 6m 10s.

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Like the XO, I needed to have my Eee exchanged for another due to a keyboard problem. But unlike the XO, the problem was mostly cosmetic (the left side of the space bar was slightly warped) and I was able to take the Eee to the retailer to be exchanged. Not being a consumer product, the XO naturally has a disadvantage because it has no retail store. That was to be expected. But the fact that I needed to pay a total of $32CAD in shipping and $48USD in brokerage and surety bond fees was a total surprise. That added another $80 to the price of the laptop, with no guarantee that the one I would get in exchange would be fully functional.

That’s not to say that the keyboard of the Eee is perfect. Like any keyboard, it requires a bit of time to become accustomed to it. Because of how cramped the keys are, I really notice any extra length on my fingernails because I’m typing with the very tips of my fingers on the main A to L row of keys. The placement of some keys is quite awkward, particularly the “1”, which is more easily accessible with my ring finger than my pinkie. The “e”, “i”, “c” and “m” keys are often missed due to how I need to curve my fingers and apply pressure to the keys. Surprisingly, this is more noticeable for single words than when typing entire sentences.

The touchpad, like any other, is a painful alternative to a mouse. Luckily, the Eee’s operating system (Xandros, a flavour of Linux) auto-recognizes the two Logitech mice I have. Linux does not have great support for more than just the scroll-wheel and left- and right-click buttons, but this is not something unique to Xandros and is something I don’t really need.

I did have some permissions issues when trying to install new dictionaries for OpenOffice.org…it seems that I could only get to the “super user” access through the terminal. This may be a strange glitch in the way I have customized my Eee, because I have not seen this problem reported by other users. Once I was able to install the Canadian dictionary, the spellcheck was an invaluable feature of OpenOffice.org. Because of the idiosyncrasies of the keyboard, it is invaluable to be able to correct many typos quickly.

Adding more software to the Eee is not always an easy task. From what I’ve seen, “Easy Mode” only allows for updates to the software, and any adding or removing of software needs to be done in “Advanced Mode” (i.e. full KDE desktop for Xandros). Because Xandros does not have the same market penetration as SUSE, Fedora or Debian, it doesn’t have quite as many pre-compiled applications available. Many users have reported that most Debian packages are compatible with Xandros, but those packages do not seem to be supported for Xandros by either the Xandros folks or the Debian folks.

When showing off the Eee to friends, they’re always struck firstly by how tiny and light it is, and then by what a familiar feeling they get from the “Advanced Mode” interface. When using the Eee in public with little fanfare on my part, I found that many onlookers were extremely curious, but stopped short of actually asking about it. The Eee received many glances which I assumed were intended to be discreet attempts at determining what the heck it is (and possibly who makes it).

The power adaptor is both a blessing and a source of frustration. Because of its size, I was able to toss it into my purse along with the Eee itself. But the placement of the prongs relative to the bulk of the adaptor resulted in two instances where I thought I could use the adaptor…but couldn’t. In the first instance, there were two free ports on a powerbar, and the length of the adaptor was greater than the space available for two more compact plugs. In the second instance, the outlet was on a hub attached to a table at a lecture hall and the prongs were too far down on the adaptor for it to nestle into the L-shaped space allowed for the adaptor. In both instances, I was dearly missing the compactness of the actual connective parts of a standard laptop adaptor.

Because of the size of the screen I would not recommend the Eee as the only computer you own. It’s great as a portable second computer, but is less than ideal for extended use and extensive work (particularly anything involving graphics work). The operating temperature of the Eee is also a persistent concern. Although it seems to level out at a “hot-but-not-too-hot” temperature, I often worry about it overheating.

Overall, I love my Eee. I just need to find a way to make the adaptor …more adaptable.

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After much feedback from fellow XO users, I reluctantly called OLPC for an RMA so that I can get a non-defective keyboard.

A 45-minute wait and a 10-minute call later, I’m set with an RMA number and am extremely sad to need to part with the XO so soon.

The good thing is I’ll probably be able to write a much less negative review of the XO once I get a properly-functioning one. It’ll take 2-4 weeks for them to ship me a new/fixed one after they receive it, so I think I should have a new one by March.

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Note (added after some feedback): This post is based on the fact that I received a unit with a defective keyboard. I’m hoping my second first impressions will be much better. Also, I have edited the shutdown time to reflect a soft shutdown.

Original post follows:

Before I start, I need to let you know that I’m a little disappointed.Not even from the fact that this machine is not as sleek as the Eee, because what it lacks in sleekness it makes up for in cuteness. But some aspects of the design are puzzling, regardless of the fact that it is meant to be an educational tool.

First, and most frustratingly, the keyboard requires MUCH pressure for the keys to register. I don’t mean that I simply can’t touch-type, but I actually have to press down on many of the keys, and sometimes pound down on them. It reminds me of the days of yore when typewriters were still being used. Seriously, my arms are tired and I’ve barely written three paragraphs (ed note: this post was drafted in the Write program in the XO, but the final edit was done on my Toshiba M300). I can’t imagine how difficult this would be for a child who conceivably has less developed muscular strength. And remember—I’m a stone-sculptress!

More keyboard woes:

1. The CTRL key is where the CAPS key normally lives, and there is no CAPS key.
2. The space bar is difficult to use.
3. The backspace button is labeled “erase”
4. The keyboard is off-center, with the bulk to the left.

Perhaps I have a defective unit, because the right-click button for the touchpad doesn’t do anything. Neither does tapping the touchpad. I do think it’s cute for the left-click button to be marked with an X and the right-click to be marked with an “O”…but the cuteness doesn’t really help the functionality problem.

The SD card slot is in a very odd space below the monitor. It can only be accessed by swivelling the monitor counter-clockwise. Although my Sandisk 512MB SD card was recognized by the XO, my Sandisk 512MB Cruzer Micro (USB drive) was not.

The “ears” are very secure in their homes, and I was a little worried I might break them while trying to unfold them. One is more secure than the other, and I scratched a finger the last time I tried to get it open.

Power, RAM usage and wireless activity indicator lights are on both sides of the monitor/top. I have not yet tested all of the buttons, but the Neighbourhood View/Group View/Home View/Activity View buttons on the keyboard are handy, and the screen rotation button works well.

If I hadn’t spent time on the OLPC News Forum, I wouldn’t have known to look for expandable media in the Journal. I suppose that’s something which would be taught to students and educators, but it just seems like a strange place for them.

The word processor does the job, and I’ll be looking forwards to the next Sugar release which fixes the file format problem. Again, I would need to visit the OLPC News Forum to figure out how to save files to removable storage, because it doesn’t seem very intuitive.

The paint program was quite basic and mimics paint programs. I could not figure out how to resize or save images (I clicked the “Keep” icon, but don’t really know what it did because I was afraid to make any changes to my original).

The built-in browser had positive and negative aspects. Positive: to maximize screen space, the address bar shows the page title when the cursor is not in that field. Negative: many functions do not work (for example, I tried to upload a photo into Photobucket, but the “Browse” button did nothing). Many users have switched to Opera, but the flimsy built-in browser is a disappointment, especially when it’s supposed to be a version of Firefox.

The Sugar interface needs some work, because it isn’t entirely intuitive. When hovering the cursor above an icon, the text which appears is sometimes a tooltip/label and sometimes a menu option. There is no visual clue indicating the difference. The bar of Activities along the bottom are bookended by scroll icons for the left and right. When you are at the leftmost bar of Activities, the left scroll icon does not change and does not loop you back to the next bar of Activities. The same goes for the right side.

A startup/shutdown time comparison (building off my post about the Eee’s UI). Note that the shutdown time of the XO is based on a hard shutdown using the power button. I have not yet been able to find a shutdown option through Sugar:

Nicholas Negroponte has been quoted as saying “It’s an education project, not a laptop project.”

What I’m having difficulty understanding is how a keyboard which requires the same amount of pressure as a typewriter, a right-click button which doesn’t do anything, a touchpad which doesn’t respond to taps, a browser which doesn’t respond to websites the same way as the rest of the world and a user interface which doesn’t have visual cues for info-only/event-option icons is acceptable for and/or helps education.

Perhaps the resulting frustration is supposed to give students an incentive to make things better… but there are plenty of other problems for them to be solving, I think.

I’m hoping my faith will be restored after I spend some more time with the device, and when I how kids react to it compared to me. But, for now, I’m glad I bought the Asus Eee.

The XO is damned cute, though! Here are a bunch of pictures:

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Yesterday, I picked up an Asus Eee, despite the news that the XO laptop will be crossing the border this weekend. So why did I get the Asus Eee anyway?

• I went to look at the Eee last weekend, and it’s much smaller than my Toshiba M300, which is about the same size as the XO.
• I’m sick and can’t sculpt, so this is a great time for me to play with computers instead
• I want to give myself time to become accustomed to the keyboard before next week, when I plan to take it with me when I go to Toronto for work later this month.
• I want to try manipulating, or at least neutralizing, Murphy’s Law on the delivery of my XO by buying an Eee.
• I want one!

The Asus Eee is tiny…about the size of a hardcover book or paper notebook (pictures below). It comes with a carrying sleeve into which it fits very snuggly, and an AC adapter which is about the size of a cell phone adapter (and even has folding prongs!). The startup and shutdown times are amazing. Including the time it takes me to input the BIOS password which I had set for it, I clocked the startup time to be 29 seconds. I didn’t even bother to clock the shutdown time, but I would say it took less than 5 seconds.

The keyboard is small, but manageable. Like any keyboard on a computer, it takes a while to get used to where the non-character keys have been placed. To conserve space, many of the keys serve dual purposes via the Fn key. I’m composing this post on the Eee and it took a while to become accustomed to how close the apostrophe is to the Enter key, and how hard I have to hit the period and “c” keys to get them to register.

Connecting to my wireless LAN was painless, and the Eee auto-detects the WEP type and saves the key (I can’t get OpenSUSE to remember the WEP key for my connection, so it’s a relief to not need to enter that every time for the Eee). The screen size is usable, but obviously no match for a full-sized laptop. Photos can be viewed easily in the Eee, but I wouldn’t bother trying to edit them on the Eee because of the screen size. There are also merely paint programs pre-loaded, and nothing like GIMP or Photoshop, although I’m sure I can install GIMP onto this if I cared to.

The Eee recognized my Logitech Revolution X-somethingorother immediately, and didn’t require me to configure it. The only downfall is not all of the buttons are usable. I couldn’t get them all to work in OpenSUSE either, so I don’t miss the non-standard ones. USB drives and SD cards took a moment longer on the Eee than on OpenSUSE to be recognized. Once recognized, I am presented with what now seems to be a standard window across several OSs which gives me different options for how I want to view the files.

The one thing which concerns me is the heat of the device. Many other users have reported that it becomes warmer than other laptops, and many of those reports came from bloggers who viewed the Eee in a showroom and assumed the temperature was a result of the computer being on all day. After about a half hour of use, the temperature became noticeably warm, although I have not heard of any overheating and/or exploding.

I have not yet tested the webcam feature, or had time to mess around with the OS very much. I’m too dazzled by how small it is and how well it performs regular functions.

There were two odd things I noticed. The first is the Eee does not have an external control for the speakers’ volume. Luckily, there is no startup chime. The other is the Eee comes with the standard port for laptop locks. I don’t know who would actually use it, because it would be much safer to take the laptop with you when you consider the size.

Now I’m going to work on a slightly crazy and what I think to be a very cool idea for a laptop case for the Eee.

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The OLPC Community Support forum is reporting that:

“As of last night (Jan. 9) we have successfully imported all of the Canadian orders into our system (except for the PO boxes.) We will be shipping out the orders tomorrow and they should pass the border over the weekend, for in country distribution starting Monday.”

I’ve checked the status of my shipment on the laptopgiving.org website, and there’s nothing showing yet. This is promising, and I wonder what it means for actual delivery dates in Canada. I feel like I’m being both optimistic and cynical by expecting to have mine in my hands by the end of next week.

What’s baffling is the post shows with a time-stamp of Fri Jan 11, 2008 12:02 am, so I’m not sure from where it’s being posted…

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Maybe I just can’t make a decision these days.

After some second thoughts about the XO laptop being able to do for me what it was never meant to do, I thought I would buy the Asus Eee this weekend to serve as my ultra-portable sublaptop for travelling. Why this weekend? Because I bought a new camera and want to wait until after it arrives in the mail before I buy the Eee (to use it to take pictures & videos of the Eee…there’s always a reason to my madness).

Of course, this may be the worst time to decide to buy anything because of CES.

jkkmobile reported the Asus prototypes of the 8″ Eee, and now I’m left to wonder whether I should wait a potential year (by my random estimation based on no facts or review of previous market/production activity) for the production to start on those or just buy the existing model now.

For no reasons other than the aesthetic of the laptop with the wider screen, I prefer the promise of the 8″ Eee (especially because, at this point, there doesn’t seem to be any other difference between the two models). When I look at the two laptops side by side, the prototype of the 8″ has a better balanced ratio of screen-to-plastic, visually. I must hand it to Asus, though, for choosing black as the colour surrounding the screen, even for the white model, of the 7″ Eee. The black hides the awkward relationship of the screen’s length and width much better than white would. And although the white one has potential of being mistaken for an isomethingorother, the black one reminds me of a ThinkPad from the days of yore.

And where does this post leave me? Nowhere, really. Realistically, I’ll probably end up buying the Eee this weekend as planned and trying to unload it next year when the 8″ is available. That’s just what happens when you get a woman who likes gadgets instead of shoes.

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