I was very happy to receive 5 XOs in the post today (thanks Pia!) for the Gold Coast OLPC club/group that I proposed at the last Gold Coast Barcamp.
If you live and/or work on the Gold Coast and you are interested in being more involved in the OLPC project, please join the Open Source Developers Gold Coast mailing list to be kept informed. As the group grows we may start our own list, but the osdgc list should do for now.
The main purpose of the group is to develop software for OLPC, but you don’t necessarily need to be a developer to join in. You may be interested in testing, getting involved with a deployment or just want to find out more about this fantastic project.
I am proposing (unless I get better ideas) that 2 of the units remain at my office for demos and testing (I have a great almost 4 year old beta tester that loves XO) and the other 3 can roam around the coast with developers who have a specific need for hardware.
4 Comments
I would like to get one for our office to do some testing on are any of these available to purchase?
Well I have grabbed the first one, and am just playing with it to see what it offers. Its a cool little thing and I got it straight onto the internet via the secure (WPA TKIP) wifi router here, without any problem. The interface is quite intuitive. I just clicked buttons til something worked, as any child would be expected to do
. The tiny keypad means I would rather pay twice the price and buy an Eeepc instead, but it looks good for children, poor children, and anyone who might use it rather than a tiny mobile internet device where keypads are even smaller. I think I would pay perhaps a little over $100 for it, but I am sure its worth more to some people. Anyway, irrespective of that, I realise that its intended for 3rd world people, especially children, and I am sure its very suitable for them.
Its great to see that its running linux (Fedora). At least it will not be hampering the 3rd world with viruses. These users can play and learn useful stuff and not have to even know about viruses, which can remain in the 1st world and in the corporates - the realm of the Microsoft mafia.
Andrew - if you want to buy one, take a look at:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Friends/PurchasePool#Purchase_pool
There is a purchase pool which is getting close to full.
If you do want to borrow one of the Gold Coast ones for development or testing of anything you’ve written that’s fine, but I do want to keep them moving around. If you want one long term - it might be best to purchase.
For development there is very good software at http://sugarlabs.org that I use on my main linux box.
I would like to be in the loop, may be able to help in some way