I can haz XO!

[mdlbear]

My OLPC XO finally arrived, sometime during the week! Did they send me email with a tracking number? No. Did they actually have my name on the damned box? No to that, too. But it found me anyway.

Squee! (Or as close as this old geek gets, anyway.)

The screen is fantastic. It's exactly 1/4 of a letter-sized page, and a full page of 12-point type is easily readable at arm's length. Even more so with the backlight off and good lighting for monochrome (reflective) mode. It's about twice the weight I'd like a book reader to be, and a little bigger -- the Asus Eee that I'm borrowing from work and lending to the flower_cat is more the size I'd like. But its screen sucks by comparison.

There are places where a paper songbook would be more convenient, and it's certainly more readable. But if I had to take one or the other...

Comments

Ook, ook!

[donsimpson.livejournal.com]

I've been admiring linda_muireall's Asus Eee (which, naturally, I pronounce "Eee!") for a while now. I've had a couple of very brief hands-ons with the XO, and will be interested in your experience with it.

Re: Ook, ook!

[mdlbear]

Colleen is borrowing the Eee that I'm borrowing from work. It's smaller, lighter, and more like a conventional PC, but the screen is significantly smaller. The XO has a screen that, if you turn off the backlight, is readable in bright sunlight.

[asavitzk.livejournal.com]

A guy had one of those XOs on the cruise I went on back in January. It looked really cool but he was suffering from iPhone syndrome - too many people coming over to see it and ask questions about it so he couldn't actually get anything done with it.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Woo hoo!

You gonna be at BayCon? Wanna see!

[johno.livejournal.com]

At Baycon there will probably a cluster of them.

or should that be a mesh of xos?

[mdlbear]

It's unfortunate that the automatic access-point-to-mesh bridging is disabled on the G1G1 build.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that would be a mesh....

Wonder if we could organize an impromptu BOF?

[mdlbear]

Shouldn't be hard... Share the announcement with the mesh...

[mdlbear]

Definitely Baycon - it's my home con. There will be a lot of them.

Kermit the XO

[chatworthy.livejournal.com]

I only got e-mail stating my XO was on its way the day after it arrived.

I also seem to have been bumped forward in the queue: mine arrived right around Yule, and I know you ordered before I did. I would have been satisfied to have it just in time for the NZ trip; instead had a month to play.

I took it to New Zealand in Feb. and got comments on it primarily in SFO airport. It's an absolute breeze to take through security; much easier than my iBook. Once I got to NZ, it pretty much stayed at home, so there was no connectivity - the kids have wireless but it's locked down and they can't remember the password!

I've been working on a little game for it, but travel and illness mean that I haven't coded anything for it in about six weeks. Also I keep filk lyrics on there. Nothing fancy about that; the lyrics are just a big web page. I want to tear into the TamTam (music sequencer/synth) code and put together an ABC player.

I'll definitely have it at Baycon; let us mesh.

Re: Kermit the XO

[mdlbear]

Just meshing around?

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

Congrats and welcome to the club! Thus far, the XO is living up to the main hope I had, providing a way for my lovely spouse to write outdoors in Florida. We'll see if that continues in the summer, but I expect it to.