I don't understand it, does it talk?

Actual quote from my Daughter. I think the thing that most impressed her first was that she could bring it with her when she came to work with me. Why, oh why a 5 year would think it was cool to come to work with me defeats me... but there is at least hope that I may even have a retirement plan in place now.

So first impressions? The form factor (i.e. small), the "ears" for the wireless antennae and the colors all contributed to the "its mine" moniker. She knows her way around an eMac and then an iMac at home, got to grips with fast user switching and passwords. OLPC? Piece of cake. The machines does not have a name yet. She thinks its a dog so maybe "lap dog".

Applications used so far? Loves

• Paint
  
• In built camera
  
• Browser for noggin.com and nickjr.com
  
• Watching The Clangers, Rooarb & Custard and Danger Mouse on YouTube
  
• Taking it around to her mates house
  

What has not worked out?

• No easy bookmarks in the browser. She has got very used to just clicking on the toolbar for the web sites she likes.
  
• Does not go to sleep, need to either shutdown or turn off
  
• Its hung a few times
  

So far so good. The experimentation continues... in the meantime, here's a video of the unwrapping...


...and running the first activity

..

The countdown is almost finished

Its my daughters birthday on Tuesday. I did the final run through the OLPC, made sure it could see the wireless network, the wired network worked through a Linksys USB200M, a really old Apple (no wheel) mouse worked etc. I tried some of the software so I think I know how that works as well... you know, I want to be one step ahead of her because I know I will get questions and more questions and more questions... I'm starting to understand what I did to my parents!

So my daughter has a huge interest in Photography, always taking pictures. Then we gave her her own camera last Christmas and then she lost some interest. Will her interest in Pinky-Dinky-Doo and other gems on nickjr and Noggin now subside since she has her own computer? Time will only tell. If nothing else my wife has "dibs" on the OLPC. She thinks its cute and wants to take it down the cafe with her...

Eeekk -- Intel quits OLPC board

Breaking news is that Intel has quit the OLPC board. So is this important? Well not sure, the current XO has an AMD processor so it does not effect the short term and Intel has been on the board for just 6 month. The OLPC team do seem to be hurting in getting NGOs and other to buy these machines, but 50k orders as part of the "Buy 1 Get 1" program is decent if not Dell like volumes.

I think it does say a lot about Intel. God-dam-it, leave your politics and product plans at the door and actually give something back to your future customer base in the developing world.

SSIDs and other wireless complications

So setting up wireless. Lets say I love the network viewer (see above)

• You are marked with an a large "X" (from XO)


• I can see all the access points (circles)


• The padlock indicates that its secure and need a (WEP/WAP)password


• How full the circle indicates the strength

Hats off to the team that came up with this. A lot of information that is presented very simply.

Problems? Well... here's what happened next...

• I first had to turn the SSID on my access point so that it shows up in the display (no shock)


• Entered the password and then I was good to go (as you would expect)


• Shutdown the OLPC


• Turned off the SSID broadcast


• Restarted the OLPC


• Could no longer connect to the the Network!

I need to go through this again, but with the SSID being broadcast and the WEP password set, it re-connects first time each time I re-boot. I need to check whether this is a one-off or it just needs the SSID always broadcast. I'll keep you posted.

Wot on Flash? Updated

We all love Flash right? Its in just about in every web site these days. I know that I can’t live without YouTube or a vast range of other sites. My 5 year old spends a vast majority of her time on the my wife’s iMac on nickjr.com, noggin.com or other kids sites kicking ass on platform games. So imagine the horror when I find out that all these Flash based sites are toast. So Flash is there, its just that none of the Flash based web sites I tried delivered any content. Not determined whether this is a wireless throughput issue or just that the OLPC can’t deal with the load or the graphics.

Will keep you posted. Very bad day in the OLPC ownership world. Not sure how I’m going to explain to a 5 year old that whilst she has her own computer that all her favorite websites are hosed and she cannot watch episodes of The Clangers, Rooarb & Custard and Danger Mouse on YouTube.

If she does not kill me within the first 15 minutes of ownership, I promise to keep you posted on workarounds...

Update 2-Jan-2008

So I hunted around and found the background materials on the OLPC Wiki. Turns out that a Flash player in included, just not Adobe's... following the instructions and install Flash (I used 9048) and I now have Noggin!