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[Jimmy]

After 24 hours with two XO's.  Here is what I've noticed.

It is slow!  Especially for a machine with a diskless hard drive. It takes longer to boot up than my Averatec laptop with XP. Opening its own apps is also really slow. Kids are not going to like this, anywhere.

No documentation ships with the XO. Not even as a file onboard. The OLPC people say that the XO is so simple, that  a child will just "discover" how to use it  A few hours have been spent at our house with two XO's... one with an adult and another wth a child. Personally, I think this lack of documentation is just lazy. I hope that's all it is. The child gave up on the XO entirely after less than hour. Their concluding comment was, "It doesn't work!" Maybe that sums it up. But in the interest of discovery, here are a few things I have "discovered."

I discovered that, thankfully, for my child and me, there is a "Getting Started" page at the XO Wiki, but you can't get to that without an internet connection. Getting an internet connection, as it turns out, is as 'simple' as getting on a real computer, downloading and PRINTING the instructions. Then, following the instructions is as 'simple' as finding the unlabeled Linux terminal app on the XO and typing in some Linux code. Yikes! They are going to love that out here in the bush.

But, I did get on the internet with XO. And I rediscovered by my first XO learning. That is, the XO is slow. Browsing on a XO, using a full-on wi-fi cable modem that routinely tests out at 6+ Mbps is....painfully...slow. Let's move on with our discovery.

If literacy is an OLPC goal for third world children, then the most helpful XO application for a teacher might be the Write application. It could help a child become literate and motivate the child to become a writer and better reader. A big motivation for an emergent writer, anywhere, is to emulate the print that they see around them. But, the XO can't print! The OLPC people say that paper is too expensive for learning children and that they will just use the XO to show their work. A piece of paper, or cardboard, or garbage that has a child's writing on it will be infinitely cheaper, and more motivating to an emergent writer, than an XO that can't print!!!  What child wants to yank on a string, wait two minutes for a machine to turn on, wait some more for an app to open to show off their learning?  Rather, parents and family can point proudly to a piece of writing that is simply stuck to a wall, always visible for the people in his or her world to see. 

I hope the lack of documentation and lack of a print capability are just the result of looking for an easy way out of some tough work and not a symbol of typical western arrogance, or some new techno-colonialism. An arrogance that demands that a child carry the most expensive thing in the village, wait for it to turn on, and consume electricity, just to share their literacy.  Let's assume the best, and keep on discovering.

I discovered that the default file format for the Write application is ODT, supposedly a standard open source document standard. But not even Open Office can open XO Write files without tons of gibberish being added. MS Word doesn't work, either. There goes communication with 99.9% of the world...not good for education. Saving a document as RTF fairs no better, which is a standard that has worked across apps and across platforms, reliably, for years, until the XO.  Plain text format seems to work best, but even those files have to "opened with," not just opened. So, even though you can create mixed media documents in XO Write, you will not be able to share them with anyone else in the world. And you won't be able to print them either.

There is no email app for the XO.  They tell you to use an online mail app with the browser. Yahoo Mail only sort-of works in "classic" mode with the XO browser. Even in classic mode, however, the XO will not upload attachments. The new version of Yahoo Mail does not work, at all, with the XO.

Google Mail works, but takes about two minutes to load. Interestingly, the XO will upload attachments to Google Mail. This gave me hope for Google Docs as a tool for the XO to communicate with the rest of the world. If the XO can only produce plain text documents, maybe I could use ithe XO browser and Google Docs to create documents that could actually communicate with the rest of the world.

The only Google Doc application that really works with the XO browser is the word processor, which does its work, s-l-o-w-l-y. The presentation app tries to work with the XO browser, s-l-o-w-l-y, but all you can do is create a bunch of blank slides. These get accidentally saved in a file called "unsaved." I say accidentally, because you can't actually save your work. The Google Presentation app does not respond to the save command from inside the XO browser! Weird!  But, it turns out that Google saved a corrupted copy in the background. Finally, the spreadsheet application acts like it is working on-screen, but here again, in XO browser, the save button doesn't work and, for this app, Google doesn't save in the background.  When you leave you spreadsheet, your work will be gone. It's weird how three apps from the same company performed so differently on the same platform.

Other observations. In 24 hours, the XO has frozen dead, twice. Recovery was as easy as holding the power button, waiting two minutes for a restart, and being willing to lose all of my work for that session. No idea why it froze, but both times I was trying to use Google Docs.  I ran into another strange behavior.  About six times, so far, the XO has tried to open one of its own apps, but the app never opens. You can still use the XO, go back forth between apps that are running, or from apps to the 'homeview' (desktop), but the broken app never loads and you can't stop it. You must reboot...a concept that the XO will bring to the developing world.

You can move files back and forth to a USB drive. But there is not much point unless you want to see some plain text files on another computer, or use files you have downloaded with XO, off of the internet. If you already have files on the USB drive, you can move them, but not if they are in folders.  And you cannot create any folders on the XO, or the USB drive, or organize your work in any way. Your files are just a pile of unorganized files. This feels like the bad old days of computing, thirty years ago, when even adults didn't want to use computers, let alone kids.

I see I've forgotten to share one of my first "discoveries" about the XO.  The touchpad is insanely difficult to use and is not adjustable.  Perhaps there are more Linux commands to "discover" that can be typed into a 'user-friendly' terminal window to make it work.

So, one child with a laptop declared the XO to be broken. Is it? The adult is not so sure. Maybe, like everyone else, I believed that someone ought to be able to build a simple, inexpensive laptop that just worked. Maybe the XO is a step toward that goal. It may not be broken, but it certainly does feel half-baked.

[Chris J]

Maybe like you would like to sell a couple of XOs. How does $200 each sound? 

I actually agree with you one many of these points, and I love my daughter's XO (and she loves it too). The printing thing is an egregious oversight. The browser is lame (many owners have loaded Opera to gaet around that problem). The whole unit is pretty slow. But in spite of these faults, it is rugged, compact, cheap to run, useable in direct sunlight, and (believe it or not) intuitive to use, after you get over the fact that it is not Windows-based.

No documentation is a problem. I can understand why that happened, and the online docs are getting better all the time. You need to read the Getting Started and Troubleshooting portions of the wiki, and for particular apps, you may need to read their pages. I put together my own reference docs from pasting pages from the wiki and found them to be helpful. FWIW, my 8-year-old daughter got some things working faster than I did and grasped the Sugar interface in just a few minutes. I think no prior computer experience may be a plus with the XO.

I haven't seen our XO freeze yet, so can't comment on that. I've had a few apps fail to start, but they have not been the core applications but rather things I've tried off the Activities page. Most of that stuff looks like beta test to me and I have decided not to try any more of them unless I can get them to work on an emulator first.

Many of the issues you have represent known bugs and hopefully will be cured by the first software update due in January. I'd suggest maintaining patience until you can get that update, then take another look at some of these issues.

[GregYohn]

Hi!

I think many of us end users have plans for the XO than how they can be used by children in schools.

1) I expect EBooks can be downloaded to the XO using the school server.

2) Teachers need to make educational plans and then use the machine for the students' education.

I could come up with a few more points, but I think the XO being durable and needing little electricity makes it not respond as I would like from my desktop.

[gpa_b]

I got a kick out of reading this post even though much of it was just plain the result of not knowing or perhaps knowing well enough to make fun of something. Write--USB--rest of the world??? well I'm not going to be a gas bag about it but you might try reading this for a start.
Bark Plain Traveldog: Exporting from the XO for printing and archiving

[finalist]

I've found that the bootup time may not be much faster over time, but while the initial WiFi connection may be a painful process (in terms of time), the connection is automatic the next time that I log in.

Expectations have a lot to do with it -- 'modern' computers have gotten better at booting up, but they still aren't fast; windows has become more vague about what's happening, so that while it may be 'pretty' earlier on in the process, it still isn't really ready to run in any insignificant amount of time.

My daughter and I had a blast with the video options without much pain -- sharing applications isn't intuitive, but the way kids work together, they'll keep trying what they really want to do until they figure it out -- and the ones that figure it out first will be more than happy to share/show off what they know to other kids.

But it will take getting used to, just as any new piece of technology can be expected to - a lack of preconceptions will go a long way.  I remember a lot of pain in nearly every version of windows I've ever worked with -- until you know how to reinstall an os 

[pcole]

I hope the XO team will listen to Jimmy's comments.  Jimmy, I think you had the same experience I did.  You received an unfinished computer, somewhere between alpha and beta someone said in answer to my comments, and then found yourself attacked for pointing out ways that it wasn't finished.

In my opinion everything you said was correct.  In my case the computer just stopped accepting keyboard input as well, so I had to return it.  (At least so I thought.  I am now told that I should have totally reinstalled the software and maybe the problem would have gone away.)  I think the attacks are from "enthusiasts" who are already familiar with Linux, so they don't really mind the "challenges" the XO presents.  What you and I are telling them is that the XO should not be a fun project for geeks but rather a really rugged and robust computer that does its thing reliably in difficult conditions and with essentially untrained users.  I think we both want the project to succeed, which is why we have subjected ourselves to attack.

In short, please listen to these complaints.  They are a resource for the project.

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