Some more XO testing...

So after playing a bit of SimCity in the afternoon and heading to another OLPC Austria meeting I now spent the past 3 hours trying a couple of other things on the X0s.

First of all I followed Walter Bender's advice on installing the Adobe Flash codec to see whether that would enable me to watch Flash-based online-videos. I went to the Adobe Flash Player Download Center Linux (x86) and downloaded the .tar.gz file. Then I followed the instructions from the Adobe site and installed the codec on one of the B4s (don't forget to close browse while you do that). Afterwards I checked whether the installation had gone well by typing in about:plugins into the browse address-bar to get an overview of all the installed plugins. Afterwards I went over to YouTube to check whether that update made any difference. And indeed it did! After looking for Johnny Cash's Hurt video and looking at the loading animation for some time the video actually started playing. It was quite choppy and the CPU utilization quickly maxed out at 100% so the result was closer to a slideshow than a 25fps experience. The sound was smooth most of the time but did drop out occasionally. I also checked out other video-sharing sites and video-podcasts such as MyVideo.de, CrankyGeeks and Inside One Laptop per Child: Episode 04 by the Red Hat Magazine, all with the same result. Changing the quality of the videos to "low" did seem to speed things up, but only barely so. So for now I'd say online-video is doable but it's not going to be a smooth ride. I do expect that to change though as Gnash gets improved (and Walter Bender also mentioned that "There is a more recent one that will be shipped with the G1G1 machines").

The next thing I tried was to upload a video to YouTube that I wanted to record with the X0's camera and microphone. And while both devices appeared to be recognized (at least that's what I assume by looking at the options) the YouTube recorder says that the video-device isn't ready for recording. So I decided to work around that limitation by recording the video with the regular record activity in order to upload it directly. Unfortunately (and only after I had uploaded the file) YouTube told me that .ogg isn't supported by their platform. I hate to disappoint you but apparently there's no way to broadcast my wisdom via an X0 at the moment.

Seeing that that this was a bit of a frustracting experience I decided to test how well Flash based online-games would work. Never having played one before I just choose some of the first results I found via Google and gave them a try. The experience was quite similar to the Flash videos in that things did work but were a bit on the slow side. Not a dealbreaker but definitely not all that confortable and exciting.

The next stop was to play around with the read activity which serves as a light-weight RSS reader. I found it to be very comfortable and also liked the fact that links I clicked were directly opened in browse. Unfortunately I didn't manage to work the other way 'round, I would have liked to be able to select RSS feeds from websites in order for them to be directly added to the read activity.

After that I again followed one of Walter Bender's recommendations by downloading and installing the watch & listen media-player activity. Everything went smoothly and after a minute or two I was looking at some of the media-samples I also downloaded from the OLPC wiki. It certainly makes a lot more sense to listen to MP3s or watch videos in that activity instead of relying on eToys (like I had mentioned yesterday). One thing that I forgot to try it whether watch & listen also supports online-radio-stations, I think I'll try that later today or tomorrow.

Last but not least I hooked up an old el-cheapo Microsoft Wheel Mouse to see whether the X0 would recognize it. It worked without a hitch and was usable after less than second.

All in all I'd say that my impression of the current state of things today is more favourable than last night. Following Walter Bender's suggestions only took ~20 minutes and resulted in a significantly better overall user experience. I also believe that the latest software-versions come with many improvements and the whole package will be more polished and ready for prime-time in about 2 to 3 weeks once Update.1 is ready.

Anyway, for now I'm off to play some more SimCity... :-)

OLPC XO hits mass production!

Reading the story called "OLPC XO Laptop Mass Production Started - Finally!" over on OLPCnews.com really made my day. It's outstanding to see that those little green machines are finally being produced!

Congrats to all the folks involved in OLPC, you did an amazing job!

Next stop: Software @ Update.1 aka First Revenue Ship (FRS) aka killjoy

MiTAC's education laptop

The other day I mentioned that I had written a piece on the impact of the Asus eee PC on the One Laptop Per Child project for OLPCnews.com. Today I came across an announcement that works the other way: it shows the impact of the OLPC project on low-cost computing, especially when it comes to education. In the press release it says:

"The first product to be jointly developed and manufactured by MiTAC and MIND will be a 7-inch notebook. All aspects of this 7-inch notebook’s design and functionality will be geared towards facilitating the education of young children aged three to twelve years old. Among the many unique features of this notebook will be a specially designed keyboard for use by children. The notebook will also feature a handwriting recognition platform for toddlers not yet able to operate a keyboard. The notebook will also sport a light-weight and durable casing, ideal for young children. Other notable features of this notebook include Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, a website filtering tool, karaoke functionality and web camera support."

I underlined the features that are similar to the OLPC's X0 while the bold text are things that the X0 does sport at the moment. (Yes, I'm indeed serious about the karaoke stuff!)

While I've never heard of MiTAC or MIND this announcement shows that more companies are starting to look into low-cost computing. While they're likely to share some key-characteristics with the X0 (low power-consumption, 7~9 inch screen, very durable, WiFi connectivity, smaller keyboards, etc.) they'll also come up with new and innovative features and applications. I for example really like the idea of seeing handwriting recogniting on these machines and as far as I know this is something that's not available for the X0 at the moment.

It remains to be seen whether the notebook really is available "in early 2008 in select Asia-Pacific markets" but I'm sure come CeBIT we're going to see more companies showing off products aimed at the same market. Good times... Good times indeed!