JOEyGADGET

My One Laptop Per Child OLPC XO laptop arrived this morning. As the previous entry reports, I was one of the unlucky Day 1 Donors (D1Der, in OLPC lingo) who didn’t receive my OLPC XO on the promised first-come, first-serve basis, while other donors who joined the Give One Get One (G1G1) days or weeks later received their laptops before some of us D1Ders.

I’d been checking the FedEx tracking page day after day (sometimes hour after hour), and finally on the 28th the system recognized my reference number. Many donors reportedly received their laptops via FedEx Overnight before the 24th, but I guess OLPC stopped providing overnight delivery after that date, because my OLPC XO wasn’t slated to arrive until today, January 2, five days after it shipped.

As I mentioned in the below entry, I’ll be writing about “A week in a life with the OLPC XO” laptop in the next week or so, however I will share one first impression now: Many OLPC XO recipients report the device is much smaller than expected once they have it in their hands. With so many reports of Lilliputian-dimensions, I was actually surprised by how much larger the OLPC XO is than I expected. At the same time, the keyboard is going to be a challenge for speed typing – it’s definitely not designed for big-kid hands, though it will suit little hands (or paws) just fine.

Stay tuned.