An 8-Year-Old and His OLPC

John Biggs

Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... → Learn More

Monday, September 24th, 2007

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The One Laptop Per Child project has a noble goal: to digitize the developing world. You can now buy your own OLPC as long as you buy two — one for yourself and one for a needy child. Well, Laptop got their hands on one and they not only reviewed it, they gave it to an 8-year-old who pronounced it “fun.”

The device, called the XO, exhibited quite a few problems but was very usable. The touchscreen wasn’t enabled and the trackpad was a bit off. The 7-inch screen, while readable in sunlight, was also fairly low-rent.

Clearly, OLPC designed the laptop to be usable in multiple environments and under limited budgets. At $188 — double that if you’re going to buy it here — it’s an impressive piece of machinery. Hopefully the problems will be fixed before they wing their way across the world.

My 8-Year-Old Reviews the OLPC XO [Laptop]
Hands-On with One Laptop Per Child’s XO Laptop [Laptop]

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