Surviving the Child
I was going to post about some of the problems we've had with Sam's OLPC XO. All of the issues so far have been software related, which is good because that's way easier to fix. I had been thinking that this machine was a bit underpowered, until I got the Watch & Listen video player working and started to realized where some of the performance bottlenecks were. This machine just needs a bit of work, and that's the fun part right?
At any rate, I'm not going to make that post now...
You see last night my wife Joanna and I realized why this is the PERFECT computer for a nearly 6 year old junior hacker. Joanna was making cookies and I was puttering around the house and somehow Sam managed to spill a glass of water on the couch with a good deal of it landing on Mr. Laptop. With any other machine I've ever owned this would have been a disaster, perhaps fatal to the machine. But the XO survived and never skipped a beat. The keyboard has a rubber membrane on it an all other parts are well shielded from liquids. In fact, they designed this to be a machine that can be carried to school in a monsoon. I wasn't looking to test this design feature, but as any parent will tell you, "things happen" when you have kids around.
So I don't care that this computer has some bugs and quirks. I don't mind that the processor is a bit weak by modern standards. It is built to survive a child and exist in their world and it does this very well indeed.
