[TriLUG] One Laptop Per Child

[Kevin J.]

I'd love to get one for my 10-year-old, but without seeing it in action, I'm not sure he'd get enough use out of it to make it worth a $400 investment (I like the charitable concept, but don't have an extra $400 sitting around this time of year unfortunately). I'm just hoping someone in my local LUG will buy one so I can check it out. 

Here's a positive review of the features (seems like it's definitely worth $200 at any rate): http://www.laptopmag.com/Features/Hands-On-with-One-Laptop-Per-Child-XO-Laptop.htm

You mentioned the SCShare program, but I don't see anything on their site about giving Linux pc's to people in need. Are you sure they are offering that service? If so, I'd like to contact them as we are sponsoring a Free Linux PC (FLPC...yes, borrowed it from OLPC) project in our local community and I'm eager to hear from others with some experience in this.

Kevin

----- Original Message ----
From: "sholton at mindspring.com" <sholton at mindspring.com>
To: Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion <trilug at trilug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 9:14:41 AM
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] One Laptop Per Child


Tim Jowers <timjowers at gmail.com> asks:
>Does OLPC include USA children? (see the request below)

Yes, but they can't do it alone. They need your help.

OLPC is an educational foundation with the goal of 
reforming the way education is done, especially in 
3rd world locations. 

Among the projects OLPC is working is the XO laptop, also 
known as the "$100 Laptop" or the "One Laptop Per Child"
laptop.

Contrary to popular perception, the XO laptop is not a laptop
computer in the sense most TriLUG geeks would know. It's
designed to meet the special needs of child  educational
computing and particularly harsh computing environments and
so many of the things us geeks would demand of a laptop computer
(fast processor, high-end graphics, CTRL key in the 'right' place,
high quality sound, rapid recharge rate, etc) are secondary
considerations to things like child-safe materials, long life
batteries, low quality (but versatile) audio system, a free
and open operating system (yes, it's Linux) etc. 

More info at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities

You can run a spreadsheet on an XO, in the same way you 
can reboot your server from your cellphone, but it's not
primarily designed to do that.

OLPC distributes XO's only to the 3rd world, but for a 
limited time (a week left) you can contribute ~ $400 to
the cause and in addition to providing one of these 
educational XO's to a child outside of North America, 
receive one as a premium to give to a child you know
within North America. Give it to your own child, the
kid next door, or that "inner child" we all have.

See the LaptopGiving site at 
 http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/index.php

for more info.

The program you mentioned:
  SC SHARE (www.scshare.com)
seems to be much more focused on the traditional computing
environment (spreadsheets, word processing, etc.) 

It seems like a good used for those three-year-old 
systems which no longer run the latest Vista build, but
I don't think an XO would be very useful to them. 
It doesn't seem to be cut out for that kind of work, but
I haven't received mine yet, so my perceptions might
change.




-- 
sholton at mindspring.com
Innovation is a wildflower. You cannot choose where it will blossom;
 you can only choose where it will not.
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