Initial thoughts about the OLPC

I’ve had my OLPC for about 24 hours now, so I’m going to post some initial thoughts. I’m sure I’ll have plenty more to say later.

First, I am so very happy with the purchase. It is, indeed, a machine for children. It’s small, it’s fun, and, most importantly, the programs encourage creativity over productivity. This is the single biggest advantage of the OLPC. There are a limited number of programs, to be sure, but the programs play together very well, and make me want to make things just for fun.

One of my favorite features of the OLPC is the built in camera and photo/video taking software. You can turn the computer into a photo booth contraption, which is quite fun (and something I know I would have LOVED as a kid.) The camera is not very high quality (the recordings are no better than most cell phone cameras, the photos are 640×480.) but it looks pretty good on the XO screen, which, for most kids, is all that’s important.

When you take a picture, it’s automatically logged in the “journal” – the combo file system and system activity log. The journal is a hard concept to wrap your head around at first. Instead of saving files to a hard drive in a particular folder, everything is saved chronologically. You then have the option to go in and tag the photos to organize them, add a description, etc. You files are searchable through the journal interface, so finding something is a matter of either remembering a keyword, when it was done, etc. Since everything is logged, parents can easily check on what a kid has been doing.

I didn’t like the journal system of saving files at first. It’s just so different from the way I am used to dealing with files on a computer- but really, it’s much like the way I save, say, blog posts or Flickr photos. Now that I have used the system a big more, I like it a lot. The file system is built into the computer, so when I go to upload a picture to Flickr, I’m presented with the journal interface to find the file, not the place where the file actually is on the computer. Incidentally, uploading to Flickr takes a very long time – mostly because it takes forever for the journal/finder/exploreish interface to come up. I’m hoping someone will hack the system to either add a quick Flickr upload feature or make it possible to upload to Flickr straight from the record (photobooth) program.

There is a terminal program, so one can still navigate to files (via command line) and copy them elsewhere. I have not delved into command line much- I know how to bring up the terminal through the applications, and how to switch the computer to text only , but then I’m asked for an admin name and password, which I don’t have. I’m wondering if I missed the login name and password somewhere?

The other thing I really like about the interface is how sharing between applications is built in. You can take a picture and send it to another program, or use the journal to open up a documents from one application in another application. I think the collaborative features across the mesh network will be a lot of fun. I can’t wait to try out the collaborative features with other OLPC owners (right now, I know of my mom and my co-worker. If there are others, let me know!)

A few other random observations and thoughts:

The touchpad works pretty well- better than a lot of laptops I have had, actually. I don’t know what’s up with the two areas to the right and left of the touchpad, though. I read that they were supposed to be a stylus sensitive area, but there’s no stylus, and nothing I have works on it.

Although the touchpad is good, in some programs it is a little laggy, most noticeably in the drawing program. this makes it near impossible to draw anything, which is a shame. I’m sort of hoping that either a future generation will have a touch screen (it seems a natural fit) or that they come out with a drawing device. I see tremendous creative possibility here, but it’s a little stilted right now.

The python program Pippy looks like a lot of fun, but isn’t really all that useful for learning python without another source- unless I’m missing something. It would be great if they could get a combo textbook/programming environment like Hackety Hack on the OLPC. I think Pippy will be a very nice place for me to teach myself programming, though.

The word processing program underlines misspelled words, but I can’t find a way to replace the word with the correct one. This may be a feature, though. For me, having spellcheck always available as a kid probably would have made me an even worse speller than I already am.

The keyboard is tiny. I can actually type fairly quick on it – but I have small hands and I can’t type that fast anyway. You can hook up a USB keyboard and it works just fine. Hooking up a mouse works too. I really like the springy feel of the keys.

The black and white feature is OK. It really is beautiful and clear, but the contrast just isn’t that good. I think the device has tremendous potential as an e-book reader, though. I hope that the screen technology gets even better (though I am quite pleased with it as is.)

Networking is a little spotty. The machine will always pick up the unsecured networks around us, but I have only been able to pick up our in house (secured) network once. The other times it just hasn’t shown up. When I did connect via our network, the web experience was pretty zippy.