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Comparing the OLPC, Classmate and Eee
ZDOne writes "Small and inexpensive notebooks have been a hot topic in recent months as the Classmate, XO laptop, and the Asus Eee go head-to-head with each other for the low end/educational market. ZDNet has a look at all three systems, comparing the three platforms on multiple points of data to determine which of the three fits your needs. 'In terms of overall stylishness the Eee is the winner, but the XO and the Classmate are both more rounded and rugged, and come with carrying handles. The OLPC XO has the biggest screen, an innovative 7.5in. dual-mode transmissive/reflective LCD that can swivel from traditional clamshell mode to 'e-book' mode with the screen facing outwards, tablet-style (although it's not a touch-screen). The Classmate and Eee both have similar, rather cramped, 7in. TFT displays. '"
Lately I've been entertaining the idea of moving to somewhere in the developing world where all the kids have XOs, and teaching them to code.
I've seen two maps of the Earth that led to this idea. One was a photo of the entire Earth taken at night, made from many satellite photos mosaiced together. The other is a live display that they have in a lobby at Google, that shows a real-time display of queries submitted to their search engine, in the form of bright spikes whose height is proportional to the rate of query submissions.
In both of these, most of the world was lit up - except for Africa. South Africa had some light, but most of Africa was dark.
Maybe if we taught African kids to write software, they could start businesses that would make their lives better.
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The classmate is a joke. The only thing the Classmate buys is a faster processor, a real keyboard, and 2x the Flash. For 50%-100% more cash.
In return, it is not as rugged (cooling fan and open interior, LiIon batteries, electrolytics, conventional hinge, clunky insecure closure, thick), nor as cheap, nor as useful (sunlight readable display), nor as appropriate for the 3rd world (a >50W power supply!?!).
Also, Windows doesn't understand how to use the Classmate's screen, either having it scroll up and down or squashing the display to fit.
I'd want Windows on the XO, with Windows understanding the screen resolution. THAT would be a nice combination, as Sugar is an abomination all to itself.
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You forgot. The OLPC is a freakn 1200 x 900 display. Not 800x600. It's the highest dot pitch display I've ever seen.
You forget that not all inches are equal. Since the OLPC has a squarer aspect ratio (4:3) than the other laptops (5:3) the same seven inches actually means more display area for the OLPC. This difference plus the extra .5" for the OLPC give the OLPC a display area about 6 square inches larger than the display area of the other laptops.
Add to that approximately three times the resolution (1200x900 vs 800x480) and it becomes pretty obvious that the OLPC has a much less cramped screen.
While you CAN access the console, install vim, gcc, even maybe Eclipse (if you add a pendrive to fit it), and develop any 'adult' software on XO, it IS designed and built to teach Python.
Almost all apps in Sugar are written in Python and their code is readily available and freely editable from inside Sugar. They are safely sandboxed so you won't break anything permanently, but you're encouraged to modify existing ones and write new ones - using the libraries in the system.
The laptop is meant to reveal its layers to the kid as the kid's experience grows. First - games and activities accessible by big, friendly buttons. Then, two of the activities are different programming toys - procedural, building program from bricks, and event-driven one. You gain basics of programming. Then you press a specific button and you get the source of the underlying app. At first you learn by modifying it, editing it - change colors, change texts, maybe move things around a bit. The python code is clean and well commented. Then you can try your own "hello world" and write your own python software that will run under Sugar. As you become expert at Python, you'll learn to use the mysterious "terminal" thing and write without GUI, download other libraries and languages. Nothing is unavailable, but to make sense of some parts you need experience in the easier ones. A 6yo who just begins to learn reading won't find Python sources very interesting, and won't mess with them at least until the brick-language becomes too limiting.
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The OLPC is a freakn 1200 x 900 display. Not 800x600. It's the highest dot pitch display I've ever seen.
The OLPC's resolution is given in what would be termed "subpixels" on a traditional display. So in one sense, an 800x600 RGB-stripe LCD of the same size would actually have a higher resolution: 1.44 million fixed-chroma/variable-intensity picture elements, vs. 1.08 million for the OLPC screen.
Everyone repeat after me, "It's an education project, not a laptop project."
I have watched several children play around with my XO, and not once has any of them ever asked me how to start or stop an activity using the Sugar UI. Truly, it is a brilliantly simple interface.
Frankly, the Journal is one of the very best parts of the whole thing. The XO remembers everything you do, automatically. You don't have to hit "save" when you've finished writing something, or deal with "files" and "folders" -- kids have no concept of such abstractions. You just use the durn thing, and it records everything for you, silently and efficiently. When you want to go back to what you were doing, you go to your Journal, and bingo, there it is. One click, and you're back in the saddle.
The key point here is to remember that Sugar is for kids. If you want an adult interface, you can install XFCE or your adult-sized distro of choice. Since it's just a standard Linux box, it's really easy to explore.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday