Re: Hacking the OLPC XO
On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 01:30:36AM -0500, phillinux wrote:
> Thin clients are nice for a lab, but a lot of educators are looking
> for a light cheep machine kids can carry around and take home. A
> graphic browser is essential for research and frankly if kids can
> listen to music and play with it as well, their work center becomes
> a real source of enjoyment. and at 100 bucks, no tragedy if it gets
> ripped off or lost. Most school districts pay $50 and $60 for crappy
> text books.
>
> While the OLPC folks are focused on the third world (a really great
> thing) I have my sights set on my inner city kids; some of whom come
> to school with their Macbook pros, and others who don't have a pot to
> piss in or a window to throw it out!! A functional $100 laptop (like
> the Asus EEE, only cheaper) would be hard for school administrators
> to refuse.
Since you're not wanting to run the latest MS app, basically any old
laptop that still works will do what you and the kids need. You may be
able to get a deal on off-lease laptops at a local commercial supplier,
especially since you won't need them to put the latest Windows on it
before they turn it around to you.
For example, here in Kingston, Ontario, the local place recently had
Thinkpads (18 months old) off-lease with Windows installed for $250. If
they had a willing recipeient for the lot before they had put windows on
them all, they probably could have been had for a lot less.
An alternative to ensuring that you have OO to be able to collaborate on
MS documents, why not teach the kids runing MS stuff to use open format
files for collaboration, e.g. plain text. For the keeners, teach them
LaTex.
Doug.
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