The XO computer arrived sometime Friday. We got home late from a birthday event … so I didn’t open the package until this morning, right before we left for a birthday breakfast. I took it along, because it was a geeky group. :)
The universal response (including mine when I opened the box) … “It’s so cute!”
Fortunately, there was a nine-year-old at the breakfast … he sat down and explored and announced “cool!” every now and then. He figured out the mike … and recorded a snippet of the dinner table conversation (Iowa caucuses) … then got my attention with an urgent “Listen!” We (the adults) were appropriately impressed.
First impressions: Very sturdy! Boot-up is fast (about 90 seconds to complete boot up, but clear indication something is happening from the get-go with a “clock-like” series of status dots). Well-designed icons for applications (very learnable if not immediately recognizable), well-designed hardware (the games guy at breakfast immediately “got” the thumb toggle on the left of the screen border).
We weren’t able to figure out how to connect it to the wireless network; that’s next. The XO people assume (correctly, given how these were ordered) that anyone receiving this has an internet connection and another computer, even if it’s at the office.
I knew that it wasn’t going to be here by Christmas but I was not expecting it because of this 21 December mail:
As soon as your order ships, you will receive another email from us with tracking information as well as information on how to take advantage of T-Mobile USA’s offer to provide one year of complimentary access to T-Mobile HotSpot.
That “it has shipped” mail never arrived! Or it went into spam and is “gone” because I regularly delete the gmail spam folder.More (including pix) later. But it’s really a giggle!
Added:
Safari doesn’t do WordPress in visual mode, I just discovered. No graphs!
All I can say is that we adults were stupid. To connect to a network, click “Neighborhood” and all available networks show up. Our home network is there — and so are two other mesh networks! Does this mean two other homes in our neighborhood have this computer?
Addition #2:
The “it’s shipped” email was sent Sunday! Still haven’t gotten it connected to the Internet; issues with Airport Extreme networks, according to OLPC website.
4 replies on “XO Laptop Arrived!”
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When did you order the xo? I’m wondering when mine will arrive.
Thanks, Rachel!
Haven’t looked at the forums. The XO has issues with Apple Extreme networks (oops, that’s ours) and I spent a couple hours Saturday dealing with the network because I was fiddling with settings without knowing where I had a hard copy (or even a local digital one) of our Speakeasy network configuration … and had to set everything back to default. Bleh.
Still haven’t gotten it to connect to the Net with the new configuration.
But I “see” it with the Macs. Haven’t tried to see it with the PeeCee.
the mesh networks you see are defaults (would be the closest XO’s if there were any around) according to the info on the forums at http://www.laptop.org/forums
I saw my XO show up on my windows networking list but so I know my XO is available to other XO’s.
I had no problem figuring out the networking but then mine hasn’t had any issues. I spend a lot of time in terminal though. : )
And I just haven’t quiet gotten the hang of the two tam tam activities yet, though I’ve got the editor going fairly well.