Questions and Some Answers About OLPC

The mission of One Laptop Per Child was to bring very inexpensive laptops to needy children. Perhaps you did the same thing we did and purchased one for ourselves as part of the get one / give one project.

I can’t say that I have used ours much. The keyboard is pretty small for my hands. Originally, I spent some time online, but we switched our router from WEP to WAP and I have been unable to figure out how to configure the new password (it seems you have to convert the password to hex, but the conversion with a Airport Extreme works differently, etc.). I can still get the XO to work at my office.

To me, the project has struggled with direction. The original commitment was to put these computers in third world countries and then it turned out deals were made to offer the machines in some U.S. schools. The machine was to be developed based on open source software and now Microsoft has become involved in the project to include Windows.

This linked interview (Robert Scoble and the COO from OLPC) offers an update.

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