XO Day 1

Well, it's been an exciting day here (overall). For the first while I couldn't connect to my home network, for some reason. I couldn't even enter a password. The password prompt would show up, but would never let me say 'Ok'. But it's working now. In fact I'm typing this entry from my XO. This is likely the last time I will do so, as the keyboard (well the whole computer) is tiny. If I squeeze my fingers together, I can get them to fit as they should on the home row. But ok, kids have small hands. Another little annoyance currently is that the text input form in the 'Browse' activity doesn't show where the cursor is. Strange. I haven't tried the writing program to see if the cursor position is visible there, but I expect that it is since the cursor shows up elsewhere (like the address bar).

Ok, so it's tiny. But I'm pleased. Installing new activities from the OLPC wiki is a matter of point-and-click. Taking pictures and video is easy to, and editing pictures. I installed the most fun looking game on the activity list: freedoom (yep, doom. You can debate it's inclusion on a kids laptop, but I'm the only kid on this laptop). And it runs great. Gmail and reader work just like on any other place I have used them. My first go at watching a flash video from youtube didn't succeed, but I didn't really care. Perhaps I'll try again sometime.

I plugged in a usb thumb drive and its contents popped right up in the journal viewer. Copying them to the local drive was no issue, just drag and drop. The pdfs that I copied looked great (a little small, but I think I can zoom more). For some reason with such a small screen I don't expect much in the way of resolution, but the XO screen is surprisingly nice (well, surprising if you haven't been reading for months about how great it is).

So anyway, those are my first brief impressions. I'm a little sad that my hands are bit too big for the keyboard, but that's ok. It's really a cute little machine, the XO. With no moving parts it is beautifully quiet. If you were wondering, the 1GB drive is only about 1/3 occupied by whatever comes pre-installed. I took a picture with my hands over the keyboard, but I'm having a hard time getting it included here through blogger. Ah well.