So easy that only a child can do it...

[drcpunk]

mnemex explained to me that the XO is intended for people who have never used computers before. This, he said, means that it may confuse people like me, who are used to computers working in certain ways.

Today, I tried to play with his XO, with limited success. I figured out how to turn it on and off, and where to plug the power cable in. I figured out which icon to click to use Opera, as opposed to the default web browser, and I surfed the web.

Then, I tried to use the Write program. I figured out how to get to the home screen, and which icon to click on. I figured out where to plug in my card reader. I could not figure out how to open files on the sd card -- or anywhere else, for that matter. Also, I forgot the trick mnemex told me to use, or at least, if I didn't forget it, I saw no results from using it.

I tried to go back to Opera, but I kept getting a blank screen. I tried to close Opera from the home screen, but the mouse moves a bit too fast for me. I think mouse speed may be adjustable, but I'm not sure how to adjust it.

The keyboard feels less wrong to me now, and I do have the advantage of having small fingers.

Comments

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, the XO is supposed to be good at what it does, but we won't know until it's been out there for a while.

On this side of things, enough folks have them, having participated in the buy-1-give-1, that there are XO meets at sf cons.

For my purposes, what I want is to be able to use the machine to:

Read pdfs
Read and edit text documents
Read and edit Word documents
Read and edit Excel spreadsheets
Surf the Internet

Of these, the only thing I don't think our machine can do is handle Excel documents or generic spreadsheets. I suspect we could download something for that, maybe OpenOffice.

Surfing the Internet, oddly, is not highest on my list of priorities for the XO.