These are the laptops that came out of the One Laptop Per Child program. I am pretty impressed with it so far. Not that it is a business class laptop, it isn't. It is however an example of very savvy industrial design and targeted usage.
1. It is targeted at kids and it is kid sized.
2. The construction seems pretty sturdy. I guess if I wanted to try and break it I could run it thru our HALT test suite at work but my impression from look and feel is that it would do well.
3. It is intuitive. I can see an 8 year old being up and running in a very short time.
4. The wireless is easy to set up and it works better than that on my HP laptop. Microsoft could learn something here.
5. It is cheap and if economy of scale kicks in I can definately see them reaching their $100 price point.
6. In a very smart move it can be configured as an e-book reader by going into a tablet mode. Very good idea in my opinion. Plus the screen will go into a high contrast mode for outdoor use.
The major problem I have is lack of storage, but USB keys are cheap and how much stuff does a school kid need to store.
Overall I have to give the designers kudos.
OLPC, One Laptop Per Child, Tech
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