Are you an XO laptop user looking for great computer accessories? Like SD cards, keyboards, USB memory sticks, and even OLPC t-shirts to show your One Laptop Per Child pride? Then for your shopping enjoyment, may I introduce you to three XO Accessories stores:
Walter Bender's XO View
- OLPC News XO Accessories Store: I've put together a list of Amazon.com goodies to supply you with a whole quiver of green gadgets to color compliment your computing theme. My favorite - a green gamer mouse to avoid the XO trackpad.
- Auntie Mame's XOExplosion: The Mass XO User Group leader has add-ons and tweaks for the G1G1 owner to find more joy in the XO experience. My favorite - XO View, an exclusive XO camera viewfinder.
- Brady Pierzchalski's I Love My XO: Offering six accessories separately or as a "travel pack" perfect for the XO on the go. My favorite - the signature USB flash drive.
Actually, I think Auntie Mame says it's the best:
"By giving first-world users a venue for tweaking their XO's, we're increasing visibility. By giving developers a venue to market their developments, we're increasing the product's viability as an educational resource."So do your best to support OLPC, and America itself - go shopping!
I remember once when the OLPC and XO was about helping third world children.
XO stores and User Groups are not helping the under-educated.
Why not sponsor a child instead of your green toys.
"Disgusted", what a funny comment. I donated an entire XO's worth to OLPC when I purchased my XO through G1G1. Since then, they've hardly supported the G1G1 community, which is definitely the way things should be. Let consumers purchase what they want - they already donated significantly to OLPC.
whoops, missed a phrase -- it's about helping education in developing nations, not underdeveloped ("third world").
XOView - USB mounted viewfinder : $ 9 for a piece of plastic !!!
That is really too much.
the missing, most-asked-for accessory? a wire with an XO-compatible jack on one end, and, optionally, a cigarette lighter plug on the other. (extra bonus points if it's green.)
I have no problem with the giving, Its the getting part and the consumerism that disgusts me. People only went into the G1G1 because they were getting something back. Then when they didn't GET quickly enough they complained...and loudly.
Now we have XO stores. God help us.
Would OLPC have sold any laptops if it was Give One Give One?
Probably not.
Marc, perhaps in some other context, $9 would be too much for a piece of plastic, but you should know that the XOView viewfinder was an experiment I funded to produce a small batch to make available to a few who were interested. These were designed by an expert in dimensional fabrication and built on a $50,000 Stratsys FDM 3D printer. Given that there will only be about 250 of these ever made by us, the real cost, counting machine time and labor, is closer to $50 each. No one is remotely close to profiting from this. We will be open sourcing the 3D data file if anyone ever becomes interested in doing larger quantities. Nicholas himself emailed me to say how much he enjoyed learning about the viewfinder and I personally delivered one to him last month.
Hi Mike, I see this XOView viewfinder as a nice tool we could send to our project in India (we will have a total of 34 XO soon) but the price of the tool is quite expensive compared to the price of the XO itself ($200).
I hope you will be able to decrease the cost, this tool really deserve to be delivered with each XO in developing country.
Yes, the price of the viewfinder should just be pennies, if anyone can fund making tens of thousands of units. I should point out that my original idea was to make these out of LEGO bricks. The visual instructions are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiouslee/sets/72157603547309133/
You could make dozens of viewfinders for your students from one "builder" set.
Paper Viewfinder
This requires only one 6 cm x 4 cm piece of paper and a piece of adhesive tape.
Has the additional advantage that it can be left on the XO, folding down for storage.
How to make the Paper Viewfinder:
http://bolinux.org/paperview.html
But please do buy Mike's plastic ones, if you can afford to or have your company pay for them :-), they're way cooler and he is a generous guy with his time and resources - I am positive he's not making a cent out of them that isn't getting back to OLPC right away.
You haven't mentioned the Jerkstopper cable retention kit? A MUST HAVE for all laptops imo.