WaPo rave review for XO laptop


See here. WaPo blogger Gene Weingarten raves about his OLPC machine, saying that the machine is “hellishly annoying to work with,” because the keyboard is too small even for most 12-year olds, the mouse touch-pad is “balky,” the screen is too small, and changing from one program to another is “a glacial process.”

Otherwise, however, it’s amazing.

Money quotes:

The new XO Craptop costs about one tenth as much as a commercial laptop and is worth every penny of it, in the sense that if you got a brand new car for $1,300, you’d probably be reasonably pleased even if it handled like a forklift. … I’m a little unnerved by the pukka sahib mentality you have to take to fully endorse it — you know, it’s a maddening machine, a devil to use, I’d never expect MY kid to be satisfied with it, but it’s fine for the po’ kids in loincloths?

Dollars to doughnuts: The machine is a disaster, and Negroponte wins the Nobel anyway. Takers?