All Things Patrick - Working Hard to be Lazy!

I know there were several people wanting updates on the OLPC.  The GUI is non-standard for a PC of any breed (Mac, Linux, Win) & I had thought of looking to see what other projects were around that would provide an interface I'm more familiar with.

I'm not a large fan of the Red Hat's (the linux distro that OLPC uses) rpm (yes, I realize yum has come out since I left), but I figured I could mess with whatever for a laptop I'd only be using for taking notes at conferences & such.  I'd still have access to pretty much all the tools & utilities I'm used to.

I ended up with other projects that were more of a priority for me (my mythtv boxes, work, fun...).  And then somebody pointed out Fortune Magazine - With Microsoft, OLPC may finally succeed. While a nifty title I find it on the humorous side.

The reason I guess that they feel they're failing is that they're not selling a billion times more than they can produce. They've been having problems getting the OLPCs to people and organizations that have already purchased them. They kept sending me emails stating they'd run out & I'd get mine in the next shipment - granted, I finally got mine, but this seems like poor management. I hope they're not doing the same to their large purchasers.

Other articles to look at:

• 2008-04-24 The Register - OLPC sweet talks Microsoft
• 2008-05-16 The Register - OLPC's a con - former insider
• 2008-05-16 The Register - OLPC and Microsoft punt Windows-only XO laptop

Another frustrating point of dealing with these is that Asus has already released the Eee PC (Asus launches tiny PC). It seems to have much better hardware & GUI, it's about the same price, it wasn't promised for $100 USD (considering the OLPC is neither made in the US nor marketed [except as a charity] in the US), & seems to be selling like hotcakes even considering the lack of Windows being installed. The only big difference is the Eee PC doesn't bring the promise of being a charitable for the children crusade... Oh, and did I mention they're selling like hotcakes? Maybe it's due to the fact that it was marketed in other countries & was only brought to the US recently...

Considering all of these issues, the fact that the OLPC isn't on the top of my list of projects to mess with, and work is keeping me overly busy... it will probably be a while before I do much of anything else with it.