USA Today http://301url.com/XOlaptops

The XO laptop is supposed to be a low-cost computer targeted at
children in the developing world. It is low on computing power by
modern standards, low on memory, has no hard drive and runs on Linux,
the open-source operating system. Its nickname is "The $100 laptop,"
although it's never been priced quite that low.

So why did people pay as much as $600 for them on eBay, when that kind
of money is enough to buy a much more powerful machine?

"That's not a lot of money to have something that's interesting and
different," Rob Enderle, a technology analyst with the Enderle Group in
San Jose, Calif., told the San Jose Mercury News.

But Americans can buy the machines directly from One Laptop Per Child,
an organization dedicated to providing computers to the developing
world, for $399 -- and half of that money goes to send another XO
laptop to a child in the developing world.

An eBay search this morning http://301url.com/XOeBay listed [over 30]
XO laptops for sale, with most bids hovering around $200 -- so perhaps
the XO boomlet was a Christmas phenomenon.

On Dec 26, 1:10 pm, Nomen Nescio <nob...@dizum.com> wrote:
They have been offering them on the "Get one Give one" plan for
months.

I bought one of these for my nephew. I wanted to support the OLPC
movement, give a PC to charity, and also get a chance to actually look
at the machine. I got it this morning, and I must say I'm quite
impressed.

It has enough memory to do the job, it also has some built-in flash
memory, and has a slot for SD-RAM, which it uses as a form of
storage. It also has 3 USB ports, which can be used to connect
storage, keyboard, or mice. I haven't tried it with a hub.

The nice thing is that you can use it with thumb drives to get more
storage, as well as using it to share pictures stored on SD-RAM with
my camera.

I had no trouble finding and connecting to public WiFi, and even
connected to my WEP encrypted hub. No trouble browsing, chatting, and
I didn't have trouble viewing RSS feeds. There are also some great
introductory programs that are perfect for 10-16 year old kids who
want to learn a bit more about how to make the computer do things.
There is a program to teach computer programming, and another one that
lets you do music composition, including orchestration. I was
originally planning on giving it to my 8 year old nephew, but now I'm
thinking about giving it to my 17 year old nephew.

The only thing I found a bit awkward was the keyboard. It was a bit
small, but I haven't tried plugging in a larger keyboard yet.

I think most people understand that they are doing the "Get one Give
one" but they also want the consoles in time for Christmas. I got
mine the day after Christmas. Fortunately, the family won't be
celebrating together until this week-end.

That's what I did, and I can certainly see where it will help a great
deal. This isn't really a "Toy computer" at all. It has real
computer capabilities, but it's small enough to be carried easily,
light enough to be carried like a book, and it uses a small power
supply to charge a battery pack that will power it for a few hours.

The other "Hot Item" was the ASUS Eee 4G. It was very similar, a
small screen, simple Linux system, and full capabilities, but more
like a cross between a PDA and a Laptop, for about $400.

Rex

"Rex Ballard" <rex.ballard@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:597a52ef-b7da-494a-be03-344b123ffe95@f52g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
I'd say it's just as much a "real" PC as the OLPC machine is. It's certainly
as powerful as most laptops were, say, 3-5 years ago.

I think the real competition to the Eee PC is something like Nokia's internet
tablet, the N800.

On 2007-12-26 18:22:39 -0500, "Joel Koltner"
<zapwireDASHgroups@yahoo.com> said:


I just got an eee pc, awesome little machine!

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 19:50:47 -0500, Phoon Hencman wrote:

I've had mine for a few months now. I still love it!

"Nomen Nescio" <nobody@dizum.com> wrote in message
news:675aff66384f5e2e38cbeaa301509c50@dizum.com...
its not as if they are going to play games or do high volume number
crunching.

I understood they were just to allow the users to surf the internet to see
what the world is doing..............or not doing as the case may be.

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:22:39 -0800, Joel Koltner wrote:


Ahh, the symmetry of that competition -- either one is a win for the
Linux platform



-Thufir

In news:hBIcj.20054$DP1.7006@pd7urf2no,
Thufir typed on Thu, 27 Dec 2007 07:35:41 GMT:
Linux will never win until devices comes with Linux drivers. And I have
been waiting 16 years for that to happen. I don't see that happening
until Linux goes commercial like Windows. And even Linus Tovalds claims
in his book, he even uses Windows. I myself would run Linux here on my
laptops, except I don't want to turn my laptops into glorified PDAs.

--
Bill

Phoon Hencman wrote:
customisable, lots of apps available, solid build, truly portable, and
has a restore partition.

GB£220 delivered is a bit more than '$100' but worth it for true
portability.

There is surely a (large?) market out there for truly portable laptops
for small bucks...

I think PCs have taken a wrong turn somewhere - ever more powerful
hardware running ever slower, bloatware. Apart from gaming do you really
need 4-5GHz of processor(s) + 2GB RAM... for internet and Office?

OK you need it to run Vista but no-one 'wants' to run Vista, they want
internet access, email, Office etc.

My old 900MHz 768MB Thinkpad is really zippy running Linux - imagine
what a modern laptop would run like with a 'slimmer' version of XP...

Ahh, I must be getting old...


Guy

* Bigguy fired off this tart reply:

Bigger hardware means bigger revenues.

Ever-bloating Microsoft software means bigger revenues.

And wise!

I used to use a Sun workstation that ran on 32 Mb of RAM.

--
Tux rox!

On Dec 27, 10:51 am, "BillW50" <Bill...@aol.kom> wrote:
Actually, most devices now have Linux drivers. In fact the majority
of all PCs made by major OEMs are now "Linux Ready", meaning that the
most popular distributions, such as SUSE, Ubuntu, and Fedora, can be
installed in less than 30 minutes. Most other commercial
distributions, including PCLinuxOS, Linspire, and other LSB3 standard
distributions will also self-install within less than 30 minutes.

In
news:4980bd8c-123a-4ea8-aa82-efba68c01590@e25g2000prg.googlegroups.com,
Rex Ballard typed on Sun, 30 Dec 2007 10:51:58 -0800 (PST):
I wish! My KW-TVUSB506RF-PRO is dead without a Windows OS running. My
vTech USB 7200 phone is dead under Linux. My iRiver T10s can't access
the subscription service under Linux. My Aston Shell doesn't run under
Linux. And on and on. To run Linux here, I have to dumb down everything
I am doing now. And that doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. I
realize some people don't mind dumbing their systems down, but I do. As
I have paid a lot of money for this stuff and I don't want to be without
them.

--
Bill
email: change kom to com

On Dec 28, 10:05 am, Linonut <lino...@bollsouth.nut> wrote:
Slimmer than what, XP? Windows 2000 needed 128 megabytes of RAM.
Windows NT 4.0 needed 64 megabytes of RAM.

Keep in mind that you can also use thumb drives or external USB drives
for archives, but 4GB IN ADDITION to the Flash RAM used for the OS and
core applications is quite a bit when it's what you are working on
"right now".

I remember using a SPArC/10 Workstation that had only 8 Mb of RAM, 512
megabyte hard drive, and a 10 MIPS (roughly equal to 16 Mhz 80386).

When you look at these OLPC and EEE laptops, with 256 Mb of RAM, 2 Gig
of FLASH, SD-RAM slots easily capable of supporting 4G, and external
USB "sticks" that can hold 8 Gigabytes in Flash RAM or 160 Gigabytes
in USB drives at SATA speed, it's pretty easy to see that these are
anything but "toy" computers.

Still, even Windows XP would be very cramped in that environment,
while Linux can easily work beautifully. Windows 2000 might fit, but
most of the applications would be tricky.

Linux on the other hand, often runs as a VMWare Client, and often with
as little as 128 Mb of allocated storage on XP machines, and still
runs quite elegantly, even with KDE and Office.

We really need to find a way to get the "Linux Brand" more firmly
established. ASUS is including Linux with their motherboards, but
there is no mandate to display the Linux trademarks or logos on the
packaging. There OEMs are forced to get prior written approval from
Microsoft on any promotional materials, including packaging, that uses
the Microsoft trademarks and logos. Microsoft generally approves ads
and packaging that is exclusively Microsoft and makes no mention of
competitors almost immediately. On the other hand, when a
competitor's product is mentioned, or included, it is often not
approved in time for the deadlines required by the publishers and
printers. Most of the time, there is a "Plan A" promotion that is
"Microsoft and competitors", and a "Plan B" promotion which is
"Microsoft Only". The "Plan B" gets approved immediately, but Plan A
seems to have to go through legal, then marketing, then negotiation,
then other delays, and never quite gets approved in time for the
deadline.

Apple has found a very simple way to avoid such things, by simply
eliminating the use of the word Microsoft in all of their promotional
materials. They simply have someone who looks similar to Bill Gates
(glasses, heavy, brown suit), and make refereces to his "PC" without
actually mentioning Microsoft. They seem to have even gotten away
with the term "Vista" since it's a generic term, like Windows.

The bigger problem for Linux is that it STILL isn't showing up on
retailer shelves. We still can't go to Wall-mart or Staples or even
Best Buy and look at a Linux powered computer. Unfortunately, the
"Linux Ready" on retailer shelves look just like the other $600 laptop
or $300 desktop sitting next to it, because they are only shown with
Windows.

What I do find interesting is that the "Linux Ready" machines are
still commanding premiums of as much as 20-30% even though they are
not shown with Linux.

I'd like to see OLPC and other Linux "appliances" showing up on the
retail shelves, but so far, even the appliances that are showing up
are not promoting Linux in any way shape or form. The vendors seem
more than happy to take advantage of Linux and it's extraordinary
capabilities, but they seem to be completely unwilling to even provide
the slightest mention of Linux and it's contributors in their finished
product.

Rex Ballard
http://www.open4success.org

"Rex Ballard" <rex.ballard@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:9c78c89b-7ffb-485f-9cac-0fbe1b4e665f@n20g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
I sympathize with you, Rex, but I suspect that most marketing surveys show
that the mention "Linux" to most consumers creates FUD is there's any reaction
at all... so they figure it's better to just not mention it... and of course
Linux advocates will quickly find out which devices use it anyway.