OLPC

I'm typing this on my brand new OLPC (One Laptop Per Child). It's rather difficult, because the keyboard is designed for tiny fingers, and mine don't fit. So I'm doing two-finger hunt and peck.

I ordered this in early December, in the hopes that my Social Issues in Interactive Media and Games class could develop ssomething for it. My class was over on February 27, so the OLPC is a tad late. Apparently the OLPC organization believes so completely in the power of volunteerism that there was little oversight on the program where first-world people like me could pay double ($400) to purchase one OLPC and donate a second one to a kid in a third world country. Around 20,000 orders were lost,or delayed until now. I don't really mind-- though I hope the kid in Haiti (or wherever) got their OLPC.

My department head doubled the size of my class anyway, so with those kinds of numbers it was impracticle to only have one for the class to play with, and I didn't have the money for a second one.

I took my first pictures with it tonight, and if I can figure out how to upload them, I will put them here. There are simple and more complex environments to learn programming on this. I'm planning on learning C# this summer anyway,so Ill be playing around on this too.

I can also foresee using this as a book reader, as the screen is visible even in bright sunlight, and it supports pdf's.

All in all it's a very nice little machine.