I finally managed to get a child in front of the XO PC from the One Laptop Per Child project. I thought I would share my observations from watching her interact with this interesting tool.

One Laptop Per Child may have pilot projects in many schools worldwide, but the newest program has my rapt attention. Teaching Matters, an educational non-profit, is implementing a OLPC pilot in the Kappa IV school in New York City with a refreshing twist.

There's been a lot of talk about the OLPC's cute little mesh networking laptop at Linux.conf.au this week. The foundation is taking its low-cost, robust laptop the XO to underprivileged kids around the world, but it's also funding its work by selling XO laptops to the public. The cool news from the LCA conference was that a local OLPC group is setting up in Australia to help get computers to kids across Australia.

I have been asked to review the XO computers from the One Laptop Per Child project. This is the first in a series of blog posts about my experiences, as well as those of some children with whom I will be working. I could easily gush over it or complain about how small the keyboard is in a single article, but I think the XO requires a more in-depth review than that. So I hope you'll join me as I explore these interesting tools aimed at children.

To say there is a lot of debate about MS Windows XP on the OLPC XO is an understatement. What confuses me is that everyone is getting angry about it only now. I was already complaining about it in April 2007!

EA released SimCity under the GPL3, so it could be included in OLPC's XO.

It's a threat Microsoft can't let stand: the entire third world learning Linux as children, and growing up to use it. And Microsoft is going to get its way. It comes after a sudden wave of SCO-like problems for the OLPC project. A specious patent lawsuit over keyboards. Board-member Intel thrown out of the project for attempting to convince national governments to drop OLPC purchases and go with its own (Windows) product. First, OLPC is shown what its problems will be if it doesn't cooperate with Microsoft. Then, Microsoft approaches with money and technical help - you just have to run Windows to get it.