Re: Gen2 OLPC to be dual-screen "ebook"

> 3a. Gen2 OLPC to be dual-screen "ebook"
>     Posted by: "Robotech_Master" [email protected]  
> robotech_master_2000
>     Date: Tue May 20, 2008 12:52 pm ((PDT))
>
> http://www.xconomy.com/2008/05/20/negroponte-unveils-2nd-generation- 
> olpc-laptop-its-an-e-book/
>
> They think they can get it down to $75 by using the same displays  
> being
> developed for portable DVD players.
>
> Coverage on Slashdot:
> http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/20/1621214

Count me as someone who has cooled considerably on OLPC and Negroponte.

IMHO Negroponte should have kept his yap shut on the topic of costs  
after blatting about the "$100 laptop" so loudly and frequently  
before. Or made a disarming and humorous remark along the lines of  
"I've learned that I can't estimate costs, so I'll say only that  
we're pretty sure it will cost less than the XO."

He says the display will be "the same displays being developed for  
portable DVD players"--but those aren't touchscreens, like the ones  
the second-generation XO is supposed to have.

Cost is only one of many expectations that OLPC set for the XO that  
have not yet been met. They were talking a lot about 20 hour battery  
life, but the power-management software that would achieve that is  
still not finished; actual battery life is currently about 4-5 hours.  
Another, a biggie for me, is that the XO was supposed to have a "view  
source" button that would show the actual source code for all of the  
software in the XO, or, at least, all of those written in Python.  
Well, the button is there but it doesn't do anything.

The software I got with my G1G1 is impressive as an alpha, but has so  
many rough edges that I gave up using it. For example, you can't take  
it on an airplane because the XO currently has no provisions for  
shutting off its WiFi hardware.

My XO has been gathering dust waiting for Update.1, which has  
continuously been a few weeks away since last December.

The Read application--the XO's ebook-reading software--has just  
enough rough edges to it to be a showstopper. Someone ported a PDF  
reader application, got it working, but never seriously looked at it  
and asked "OK, what's the minimum number of things we need to add to  
this to make it an eBook reader?"

--It has bugs.

--It has no bookmarks. In theory you shouldn't need one in a Sugar  
"activity" because the Sugar "Journal" should take care of this for  
all activities. In practice, the Journal, in its current state, is  
worse than inadequate for this. My XO-owning colleague agrees with me  
on this.

--If you have a collection of (say) fifty PDF books loaded on your  
XO, it is very difficult to what books you have and find one of them.  
Again, this is because the Journal is supposed to take the place of a  
traditional directory display. However, this relies on the Journal  
entries having suitable tags and metadata. At the moment, PDF files  
show up in the Journal with their raw filenames--usually severely  
truncated. Even if you're willing to type in a search query, the  
journal entries don't have any metadata that you can use to search  
on, unless you manually enter this data yourself for every loaded eBook.

--It has other design flaws as well. When you open a PDF file,  
initially you cannot scroll it with the scroll keys... because the  
insertion point is prepositioned in a small data entry field. In  
order to scroll through the file, you must first click inside the  
page area. Then you need to slide the mouse pointer out of the way so  
that it doesn't block the text. Only then can you flip the screen  
around to "tablet" position, close it, and read using only the  
navigation buttons.







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