Review: One laptop per employee?

Computerworld - Laptops used by children in the remote villages of developing nations must be cheap, compact, easy to repair, rugged and power-stingy. Business users stuck on a flight, say, from New York to Paris, would likely want the same thing.

So here's the question: Is the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO computer a good tool for business users?

Take a quick look at the XO and you can't help but be impressed with the clever design, both technically and physically. Hardware-wise, it has an AMD Geode LX-700 processor running at 433 MHz, with 256MB of RAM and a 1,200-by-900 display. It's not a speed demon, but it's designed to sip electricity lightly, not to run an Unreal Tournament.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO computer

After having an XO for a couple of weeks, I can say that it's clearly a great machine for kids. My son loves to play with it, using the Python tutorials and animation programs. However, I have had less success. Some of the issues I encountered are early teething pains, some are dissonance between the needs of an adult computer user and the included software, and some are physical problems with the system.

Good news, bad news

First, the good news. When I have to lug a laptop onto a plane, this would be the one I'd want. It is tiny compared to a traditional laptop, and it could actually fit on a coach-class tray table without it encroaching on my belly. It is also more likely than "traditional" laptops to last an entire flight without needing a recharge. According to informal tests conducted by some early purchasers, the battery lasted three and a half hours of normal use and, with the backlight off (which downgrades it to high resolution black and white), it lasted about five and a half hours. By the way, in black and white mode, with its swivel-screen, the XO makes a dandy e-reader.

There are some significant "buts," however. For one thing, the current Linux image (which is based on Fedora Core 6) has a few bugs. Most notably, you can't attach to a WPA-encrypted wireless network (the passphrase fails). Although some users have posted work-arounds on the Web, none of them worked for me. This supposedly will be fixed in the next image, so by spring it hopefully won't be an issue. By the way, this isn't an issue with public Wi-Fi zones, which typically don't use WPA.

I also ran in to trouble trying to access to my workplace Wi-Fi network. Like many corporate wireless networks, I need to open a Web browser and log into get access. However, our corporate network uses a nonstandard SSL certificate, and the XO browser doesn't have the option to accept such a certificate. Instead, it just displays a security violation error and won't open the page. The browser is XulRunner, the engine inside Firefox.