A man named bunnie talks the OLPC XO-1

I got an OLPC XO-1 a few days ago in the mail as part of the give one, get one program. Hopefully some child out there is enjoying their new laptop–there’s a certain amount of opacity in the process so I have no idea even if this laptop went to some needy far-flung village in a developing nation, as most of the propaganda would have you believe. I don’t mean to be too critical; I recognize that proper allocation of charitable resources is one of the most difficult tasks anyone can attempt, but a donation the magnitude of the laptop, even if it is only $200, is big money in the most needy countries. I somehow hesitate to think if I shouldn’t have just given a check to UNICEF instead to provide medicine to newborns. Then again, as long as one laptop is being delivered to somewhere that’s needy, I’m not doing bad compared to some other charities, where often more than half the donation is retained to cover management fees and fundraising costs. I also got a laptop out of this…so for whatever reason, Negroponte’s logic was successful in convincing me.

I Have to say ahead of time, that when I heard the arguments I wondered how many would follow through. Especially in todays environment where donations are down. I wondered how the buy one/give one was going to work. Or how well.

If I were to make one general comment about the OLPC XO-1, it’s that
its
mechanical design
is brilliant.it’s that its mechanical design is brilliant. It’s a fairly clean-sheet redesign of traditional notebook PC mechanics around the goal of survivability, serviceability, and robustness (then again, I’ve never taken apart any of the ruggedized notebooks out there). When closed up for “travel”, all the ports are covered, and the cooling system is extremely simple so it should survive in dusty and dirty environments. Significantly, the port coverings aren’t done with rubberized end caps that you can lose or forget to put on–they are done using the wifi antennae, and the basic design causes the user to swivel them back to cover the ports when they are packing up the laptop to go. That’s thoughtful design.

[Read the write up on bunnie’s blog]

Bunnie did an awesome job of ripping it apart and expounding on some interesting points. After his write up I was left wondering if any of the manufactures of laptops had taken apart the XO… and noted some of the interesting ideas behind the XO.

My vote, no.

Tags: Computers, Design, Electronics, Engineering, Hardware