We finally get a close look at the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop, and though nobody could explain the interface, the hardware was pretty cool.
At the CES 2008 Press Preview in New York City, AMD was showing off, among other PCs, the OLPC XO laptop. If you're not familiar, the XO is the brainchild of MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, and though the $200 price tag came in a bit higher than the original $100 goal, the device is still a serious machine, wrapped in a playful shell. For the next couple of weeks, you can even buy an XO laptop for yourself, so long as you also pay to donate one to a needy child.
The XO laptop is a stiff piece of plastic, and opening the device took some effort. Then we realized you had to flip up the rabbit-ear antennas to open the laptop, but it still felt very sturdy and solid. It felt like you could drop it from the back of a moving pickup, it was wrapped in so much thick plastic. Still, plastic isn't very heavy, and the device was easy to manipulate one-handed.
The keyboard was a nice, squishy rubber platform. It's completely sealed and spill proof. Keys were very small, but easy to use, and fun to press. Beneath the keys lay the trackpad, which worked well, though we wish the reps at the AMD booth could have better explained what we were clicking on screen. As it was, we managed to dig through a very cool looking music application, and watch how the main menu handled applications, but we got little instruction in the brief time we spent with the device.
One interesting feature we didn't know about was the rotating screen. The screen swivels 180 degrees and flips down to make the device look like a tablet. The screen is not touch sensitive, but in this form it might be easier to use the OLPC as an e-reader device. The screen itself wasn't bright, or especially color-rich, but for $200, what could you expect?
AMD was also showing off some very powerful laptops running AMD and ATI chips in tandem, and a Desktop PC that was the size of a Mini Cooper, running four graphics cards together. Still, the most popular device at their booth was easily the OLPC XO. That speaks not only to the buzz the device is generating, but also the polished yet playful nature of the hardware itself. We walked away from the show seriously contemplating a purchase, $400 so we could buy one and give one away.
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