XO laptop, super low power tough laptop

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Thats the sum total of your reply ???

ok dokey .... /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

so ?? .. its a GOOD, and innocent organisation then huh ?

Pigs might fly...

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Hey, you know everything, big shot. Perish the thought that you might actually do some research before you mouth off about something that you so clearly know nothing about.
 
children time out. Naughty step for all of you. The $100 laptop project is a charitable foundation and relies on big corportations eg intel to provide parts cheaply. The advantage of the laptop is that it is also a wireless base which can link to other $100 laptops creating a kind of adhoc network. 2 minutes on the bbc website will educate you that the whole thing is going to fall through because intel have got cold feet.

If it reaches a critical mass then school kids will be able use the internet and communicate with each other in areas where there isn't tradional phone/internet/school coverage. The tools allow kids to widen their horizons beyond their local villages.

Personally I would prefer that NGO's get funding to supply this equipment direct rather than it going to the governments directly as part of international aid (for the purchase of blackboards) and have it spent on landmines or jets.
 
Reasonable precis, apart from the fact that it's an AMD chip and Intel have nowt to do with it.

Negroponte arsed them out of the project because they wanted to run with the fox and hunt with the hounds by being in the OLPD project while trying to sabotage it with the Classmate.

Without wishing to sound like a complete OLPD groupie, it's a project that's been set up and run with the highest principals and ethical standards which has created a quantum leap in the way that computers are designed.

Microsoft and Intel would love to strangle it because it threatens their monopoly, but it deserves to be successful because it promises so much.
 
Fly to WEST AFRICA .. Land seek Political Assylm .. Wait a couple of days for your HANDOUT /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif Spend it on Laptop and return .. Simple .. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
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Fly to WEST AFRICA .. Land seek Political Assylm .. Wait a couple of days for your HANDOUT /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif Spend it on Laptop and return .. Simple .. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[/ QUOTE ] /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

You're hilarious. Ever thought of being on telly?
 
Hi Auldsot.
Seriously, the real problem is the actual USE of the things.. and will they improve education.. no me dont think so.. I think it is a seriously misguided and misjudged waste of money.
The harsh realities of computers in schools is they are used for chatting to mates and downloading music (in the western world).
The fact that wintel are up in arms is another tick in the box of profit and control.
Can you seriously see a small african village with no seats or indeed formal school, hit and miss teacher support etc benefiting.. oops, I dropped mine, it crashed, the handle fell of te winder etc.. sorry kid.. no more, go and play over there...
Miss ?, I cant read the screen in the sunlight... !
Miss, what does virus mean ?
Miss, whats wifi, - dunno kid.. none of that around here..
Miss, the local rebels stole them all ?
Miss.. whats a "product recall"

Miss, my dad nailed four pieces of wood under mine, it makes a great seat.. ooo class, good idea, lets all at least be comfortable....

Misguided, sad world..

Joe /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
What will they be used for?

"Greetings!

I am Mrs Obasanjo, widow of the late President of M'Bongo. When my husband died he left $136,000,000 in accounts with the Grand Bank of M'Bongo in London, but the regime only left me with this $100 laptop......."

/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
"Can you seriously see a small african village with no seats or indeed formal school, hit and miss teacher support etc benefiting.. oops, I dropped mine, it crashed, the handle fell of te winder etc.. sorry kid.. no more, go and play over there...
Miss ?, I cant read the screen in the sunlight... !
Miss, what does virus mean ?
Miss, whats wifi, - dunno kid.. none of that around here..
Miss, the local rebels stole them all ?
Miss.. whats a "product recall"
Miss, my dad nailed four pieces of wood under mine, it makes a great seat.. ooo class, good idea, lets all at least be comfortable.."

Slarty, you're actually not that far off the mark. I've witnessed sooooh many of these type of projects over there in the last 35 years.
You only have to see what they do with the fleets & fleets of Land Rovers that have been donated over the decades.
Jock
 
I do not want to enter the debate about the chritable status of these projects, nor the good intentions that they may believe in.

However as I live and work overseas I meet many people from various countries and agencies.

One comment from an Indian friend made me think.

He appreciated that the OLPC at $100 was in principle a good idea, however he added that there are many charities doing front end medical aid in remote villages in India (and I guess the same in some other countries) that would love to have even $10 per child for basic medical equipment and vacines etc.

He said that $10 can save a child, and another few dollars can educate a child using old fashioned blackboards and chalk.

For a couple of hundred dollars, they can have a decent water pump installed to get fresh water for he whole village.

IIRC "Intermediate Technolgies" designed a water pump, made from simple plumbing equipment that used old tyre inner tubes as the rubber seals, they came complete with a stamp die to cut out new seals ( hit dies with hammer, new seal gets cut), it was easily maintanable by the people in the village. Just needed a pipe wrench, a hammer and a screw driver to keep it running.

I would prefer to spend money on direct support on such schemes rather than the laptop schemes.
 
Finally after two 2 months I got the XO computer I ordered. It took me awhile to figure out how to use it. All the documentation is online.

After installing the battery and booting it up I went to its Neighbourhood screen where all the WIFI connections in the neighbourhood are displayed as little coloured circles. I tried connecting to my router but it wouldn't until I changed the router security to 128 bit. Then I was able to get on the internet.

I then downloaded the Navgator Mariner navigation trial version program. Had some serial port authority issues but an email to the Navgator people gave me a solution. Nice to have support that responds so quickly.

Then I transferred a bunch of NOAA raster charts on my Windows PC to an SD card and then put the card in the XO. It immediately recognized the card but I had difficulty figuring out how to make the Mariner program see the charts. I found a forum on Yahoo for the XO and asked them how to make a program see the SD cards files. Within an hour someone gave me the answer.

So I have the navigation program running on The XO. The next thing I need is to connect a GPS to it. I'll have to go down to the boat, which is laid up for the winter, and get my portable GPS and a serial to USB card and see if I can connect it.

Haven't got my USB serial cable yet but I decided to try afew other devices in the USB ports:

1. 250Gig USB Hard Drive- works great
2. Microsoft Wireless Mouse - works great
3. Logitech Wireless Keyboard and mouse - Keyboard works but mouse only moves cursor vertically not horizontally
4. Two different DVD burners - neither worked
5. Kingston 4Gig USB DataTraveler - works
6. AnyCom Bluetooth dongle - doesn't work

Impressive.
 
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Hi Simon

WINE is a bag of really.... linux is basically crap for most users....

wait till an MS release is available. there are lappys that cost 350 euros here in spain that run everything... a hundred of that is MS software, 50 of that is markup (at least), so its here now....

and, its NOT really a ruggedised PC, ..

its just a form of marketting by people who want to make MORE money.. NOT a help for africa or anyone .. apart from western wannit cheaper bods...

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Haven't used MS in years. WINE is fine for what I need, and Ubuntu is finally approaching what is needed in a desktop - give it 2 or 3 more iterations.
 
Still having a few problems with Navgator Mariner: The sound problem and whenever I open a chart it thows an Exception but goes ahead and loads the chart but after that things like saving the configuration don't work. Anyway I decided I would try wine, the emulator program not the drink. It allows you run native Windows programs under Linux.
So I installed it: yum install wine

The first program I tried was Fugawi ENC. It had a lot of problems. It was able to see the GPS fine and I could load any of the built in charts like North America. But when I tried to load my raster charts from the SD it went through the process of importing them but when I tried to open them it went into a loop. Also it kept getting an ole error.

So I gave up on Fugawi and tried SeaClear and it works flawlessly. I didn't try AIS but at least the feature exists, it doesn't on Mariner.

What amazes me about using wine is how fast the programs run. Faster than they do on native Windows.

For both Fugawi and SeaClear before you start them you have to define the com port to use. See below.

To install Fugawi and SeaClear I downloaded their install files on my PC onto a memory stick and then put the stick in the XO. Be sure NOT to install or run wine as a super user (su) it must be under your normal uid: olpc.

To Install SeaClear:
wine /media/KINGSTON/sc_setup.exe
KINGSTON is the name of my SD card. Substitute yours.

Setupthe com port to use:
$ cd ~/.wine/dosdevices
ln -s /dev/ttyUSB0 com1

Start SeaClear:
wine "c:\Program Files\SeaClear\SeaClear_2.exe"

If you want to load maps:
wine "c:\Program Files\SeaClear\MapCal_2.exe"

Real neat.

Paul

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