2008-01-04
Somebody told me a few months ago that my main basepath.com page was too wide for his small screen, but I didn't get around to fixing it until recently when the problem affected me on my new computer:
The redesign was just to get rid of the column on the left and move that stuff to the right.
There's been a lot written on the XO, some favorable and some not, but as Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC said, it's about education, not laptops.
I knew almost nothing about the device itself when I ordered one (actually, two). It arrived one day when I was least expecting it with no printed instructions, not that I would have read them anyway, so my daughter and I started playing around with it. Fun! We didn't even know it had a camera until a picture of us showed up on the screen.
I don't know if I'll actually use my XO (my daughters aren't interested, because they have Macs available to them), although I can see taking it on the road if all I need is a web browser, as it's smaller, lighter, and more rugged than my laptop. I've heard that its WiFi range is much greater, too.
Most of the unusual XO features (mesh networking, low energy usage, repairability) were designed for its primary purpose, educating children in developing countries. Don't worry about not being able to get an XO of your own—you can certainly contribute to OLPC anytime you like. (If you want a small, diskless Linux portable, there are other choices, such as the Eee PC or the even smaller Nokia N810. I haven't tried either one.)