1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,000 Well, hey folks, a lot of people have been asking about the OLPC or the One Laptop per 2 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:14,000 Child computer, what it can do, its capabilities and things like that. 3 00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:17,200 So I thought I'd take a couple of minutes to talk about it. 4 00:00:17,200 --> 00:00:19,400 Let's grab mine here. 5 00:00:19,400 --> 00:00:20,400 So here it is. 6 00:00:20,400 --> 00:00:21,760 This is the machine itself. 7 00:00:21,760 --> 00:00:25,640 You can see the keys on there are really, really tiny. 8 00:00:25,640 --> 00:00:30,440 If you are thinking as an adult about using this for any kind of productivity application, 9 00:00:30,440 --> 00:00:31,760 not so much. 10 00:00:31,760 --> 00:00:37,400 It does have USB ports on the sides here and then on this side here, three USB ports. 11 00:00:37,400 --> 00:00:41,240 I've tried a keyboard and a mouse, standard Microsoft ones. 12 00:00:41,240 --> 00:00:42,240 They work fine. 13 00:00:42,240 --> 00:00:46,000 So you can use it for that. 14 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:50,880 In terms of functionality and stuff, let's go to the home screen here. 15 00:00:50,880 --> 00:00:51,880 So this is the home screen. 16 00:00:52,760 --> 00:00:56,600 I'm sure you've seen the application demos and stuff, but it's pretty straightforward. 17 00:00:56,600 --> 00:00:59,120 There's not a lot of labeling or language stuff here. 18 00:00:59,120 --> 00:01:04,120 So I assume that's partly because it will be universal and you won't have to do a whole 19 00:01:04,120 --> 00:01:06,080 lot of translation. 20 00:01:06,080 --> 00:01:11,880 And also partly because I guess maybe they're assuming kids think iconically. 21 00:01:11,880 --> 00:01:16,240 Pressing the little bracketing button on the side here brings up their equivalent of the 22 00:01:16,240 --> 00:01:17,240 dock and stuff. 23 00:01:17,240 --> 00:01:18,840 And there's a whole bunch of applications on here. 24 00:01:18,840 --> 00:01:21,320 There's a lot of really good ones too. 25 00:01:21,320 --> 00:01:32,600 There is one called TamTam Edit, and it's a lot like a GarageBand-esque kind of application. 26 00:01:32,600 --> 00:01:37,480 Main difference between it and, say, GarageBand is that it doesn't have any MIDI inputs, but 27 00:01:37,480 --> 00:01:42,960 it may be what you want for a computer that has a 430 megahertz processor. 28 00:01:42,960 --> 00:01:44,840 There's a lot of good applications on here. 29 00:01:44,840 --> 00:01:45,840 There's Camera. 30 00:01:45,840 --> 00:01:50,400 Let's go ahead and turn this on here. 31 00:01:50,480 --> 00:01:52,480 Sound launch is slow. 32 00:01:52,480 --> 00:01:53,480 Booting it up is slow. 33 00:01:53,480 --> 00:01:55,280 Again, what do you expect? 34 00:01:55,280 --> 00:01:58,920 No hard drive and a 430 megahertz processor. 35 00:01:58,920 --> 00:02:03,320 So we're not exactly talking about a MacBook, and it's not supposed to be a MacBook. 36 00:02:03,320 --> 00:02:07,640 It's supposed to be for people who've never had anything at all whatsoever. 37 00:02:07,640 --> 00:02:11,700 So here we can see the webcam. 38 00:02:11,700 --> 00:02:14,600 This is a bit meta. 39 00:02:14,600 --> 00:02:16,960 Camera itself is right there. 40 00:02:16,960 --> 00:02:21,480 And then you can switch to photo, video, and audio recording. 41 00:02:21,480 --> 00:02:25,600 The video records in 15-second segments, at least in this application. 42 00:02:25,600 --> 00:02:28,880 Let's do a quick record here. 43 00:02:28,880 --> 00:02:35,280 The quality is not terrific, but again, that's probably something that can be tuned in software 44 00:02:35,280 --> 00:02:37,120 and things like that. 45 00:02:37,120 --> 00:02:41,080 Nine, eight seconds remaining here on the video. 46 00:02:41,080 --> 00:02:43,440 There we go. 47 00:02:43,440 --> 00:02:48,120 This is Infinite Tunnel. 48 00:02:48,120 --> 00:02:51,880 And then at the bottom, when it's done recording, it processes it and makes the recording available 49 00:02:51,880 --> 00:02:55,840 down here in this little dock-like area. 50 00:02:55,840 --> 00:02:56,840 There's not a lot of documentation. 51 00:02:56,840 --> 00:03:00,200 In fact, the only documentation is a sheet of paper that says, among other things, do 52 00:03:00,200 --> 00:03:02,920 not leave this out in the rain. 53 00:03:02,920 --> 00:03:07,760 Using it, it's not super easy, but again, not supposed to be. 54 00:03:07,760 --> 00:03:12,280 It's not supposed to be a commercial-grade anything. 55 00:03:12,280 --> 00:03:16,680 Let's turn, hit the activity button, for example, here, to quit any application. 56 00:03:16,680 --> 00:03:24,200 If you go to the activity menu, you can then stop out of the application here. 57 00:03:24,200 --> 00:03:28,400 In terms of networking, it's pretty cool. 58 00:03:28,400 --> 00:03:33,220 Here's the network neighborhood screen, and you can see it's locating all the wireless 59 00:03:33,220 --> 00:03:34,220 access points. 60 00:03:34,220 --> 00:03:36,880 The range on the antenna is amazing. 61 00:03:36,880 --> 00:03:40,040 It's astonishing how much range this has. 62 00:03:40,800 --> 00:03:45,520 Connecting, particularly to encrypted networks, is difficult. 63 00:03:45,520 --> 00:03:48,080 If you can find open networks, it's great for that. 64 00:03:48,080 --> 00:03:52,520 And again, in the scenarios that this is going to be used in, we have village-to-village 65 00:03:52,520 --> 00:03:58,960 or house-to-house one access point, probably not a lot of concern about people intercepting 66 00:03:58,960 --> 00:03:59,960 radio communications. 67 00:03:59,960 --> 00:04:01,920 This will probably work just fine. 68 00:04:01,920 --> 00:04:04,920 For a corporate world, not so much. 69 00:04:04,920 --> 00:04:08,440 And again, it's not what it's for. 70 00:04:08,440 --> 00:04:10,840 The other things, the tablet mode works terrific. 71 00:04:10,840 --> 00:04:14,280 Let's switch this over here. 72 00:04:14,280 --> 00:04:18,760 There is no velocity sensor, obviously, so you have to do the poor man's velocity sensor. 73 00:04:18,760 --> 00:04:22,760 Press this button right here, and it'll flip the screen around until it's at the orientation 74 00:04:22,760 --> 00:04:24,400 that you want it to be at. 75 00:04:24,400 --> 00:04:25,400 Very handy. 76 00:04:25,400 --> 00:04:29,400 And then, you know, I just put down the antennas and stuff. 77 00:04:29,400 --> 00:04:31,120 It's hefty. 78 00:04:31,120 --> 00:04:35,240 It's despite being, you know, looking like plastic, it's got a lot of weight to it. 79 00:04:35,240 --> 00:04:36,240 It's pretty impressive. 80 00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:40,760 There's an SD card slot on the bottom here that you can put additional memory in. 81 00:04:40,760 --> 00:04:46,880 Speakers, very, very tinny, but again, you know, what do you want for 100 bucks or the 82 00:04:46,880 --> 00:04:47,880 target of 100 bucks? 83 00:04:47,880 --> 00:04:50,040 There's two game controllers, actually, here. 84 00:04:50,040 --> 00:04:54,440 Not a lot of games to start out with, but I can see game developers doing a lot of stuff 85 00:04:54,440 --> 00:04:59,840 with this because 433 megahertz is more than enough, especially if you have, like, emulation 86 00:04:59,840 --> 00:05:00,840 software. 87 00:05:00,840 --> 00:05:05,040 Think about the old Donkey Kong games and Pac-Man and stuff that we used to enjoy as 88 00:05:05,040 --> 00:05:06,040 kids. 89 00:05:06,840 --> 00:05:10,640 I can run on a wristwatch, so this clearly has the horsepower for it. 90 00:05:10,640 --> 00:05:17,160 Other things, like I said, it's not as responsive as a higher quality notebook or a higher cost 91 00:05:17,160 --> 00:05:22,100 notebook, but I think for the kids that are going to be using this in countries and villages 92 00:05:22,100 --> 00:05:27,280 around the world, and even here in the United States, more than enough, more than enough. 93 00:05:27,280 --> 00:05:31,720 Let's pull up one more thing here, pull up the word processor. 94 00:05:31,720 --> 00:05:35,560 There were some criticisms of the project initially that were saying, well, you know, 95 00:05:35,560 --> 00:05:39,360 this has not going to have any kind of productivity. 96 00:05:39,360 --> 00:05:41,600 There's a full working version of Firefox on here. 97 00:05:41,600 --> 00:05:47,680 These days, with Google Docs, with all that's, you know, everything and its cousin, you don't 98 00:05:47,680 --> 00:05:50,360 need, you almost don't need an Office suite. 99 00:05:50,360 --> 00:05:55,000 You have Google Docs, you have Google Spreadsheets, Google Presentation, Firefox full browser 100 00:05:55,000 --> 00:06:00,400 means you can access all that, Zoho Docs, Zoho Database, and even on here, the local 101 00:06:00,400 --> 00:06:06,000 word processor and stuff is more than enough for people to write and do stuff. 102 00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:09,640 So it's, like I said, it's a fantastic machine for what it is. 103 00:06:09,640 --> 00:06:16,280 Don't compare it, don't benchmark it against a $3,000 MacBook or a $5,000 Alienware box. 104 00:06:16,280 --> 00:06:22,640 That's no comparison to them, but it is enough for kids who have never had a computer in 105 00:06:22,640 --> 00:06:28,840 their lives to suddenly be able to access the internet and other computers with this. 106 00:06:28,840 --> 00:06:31,640 It'll be real interesting to see what happens with this in the coming years. 107 00:06:31,640 --> 00:06:35,640 So that's my short review, and I hope what you found useful. 108 00:06:35,640 --> 00:06:36,640 Let me know what you think. 109 00:06:36,640 --> 00:06:40,760 There should be a comment button down here somewhere, and we'll talk to you soon. 110 00:06:40,760 --> 00:06:42,120 Take care. 111 00:06:42,120 --> 00:06:44,040 One final note about the OLPC. 112 00:06:44,040 --> 00:06:47,640 A lot of people, again, have talked about its performance and stuff as being not terribly 113 00:06:47,640 --> 00:06:48,640 great. 114 00:06:48,640 --> 00:06:51,560 I have a Windows laptop at home, an old one. 115 00:06:51,560 --> 00:06:52,560 It's not that old. 116 00:06:52,560 --> 00:06:55,720 It's a Hewlett-Packard something or other. 117 00:06:55,720 --> 00:07:04,480 2 GHz Pentium 4, 2 GB RAM, 150 GB hard drive, bells and whistles, DVD player, all that stuff, 118 00:07:04,480 --> 00:07:05,480 and Windows XP. 119 00:07:05,480 --> 00:07:11,200 It is, thanks to spyware, prevention tools, antivirus tools, this, that, and the other 120 00:07:11,200 --> 00:07:16,800 thing, all these different things to protect Windows against itself, the HP is slower than 121 00:07:16,800 --> 00:07:18,760 the OLPC. 122 00:07:18,760 --> 00:07:21,160 So it takes the OLPC a good minute or so to boot up. 123 00:07:21,160 --> 00:07:25,000 It takes applications a good minute to get going. 124 00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:27,120 On the HP, it's longer than that. 125 00:07:27,120 --> 00:07:31,400 So for people who are comparing it, you know, if you compare it to a $3,000 MacBook, yeah, 126 00:07:31,400 --> 00:07:32,400 you're going to be disappointed. 127 00:07:32,400 --> 00:07:35,720 If you compare it to a Windows machine, it actually might be faster. 128 00:07:35,720 --> 00:07:36,800 Just food for thought. 129 00:07:36,800 --> 00:07:38,200 Take care, and I'll talk to you all soon.