One Laptop Per Room

The XO laptop I ordered was waiting for me when we returned from vacation, and I’ve been playing with it on and off since. It’s a very clever little gadget, and while it’s not the kind of thing I’m likely to use for everyday computing, I’m glad I bought it. I’d like to sit down with the twins and try to introduce some basic computer programming to them on the XO, but I don’t know that either one is particularly interested in learning how things work. Maybe I’m selling them short, though.

There are lots of XO reviews online, so I’m not inclined to provide any in-depth coverage of the system. I really wish that someone in my neighborhood had one of these laptops, so that I could experiment with the mesh networking and activity sharing – what I consider to be the real benefit of the device. Last night I installed Doom for the XO and enjoyed playing that for a few minutes – deathmatch on the XO might be a fun diversion.

The acquisition of the XO laptop brings the total number of laptops in the house to six: the twins each have their own laptop, Carina has her’s, and I have mine. In addition, I have an Apple PowerBook I purchased moons ago. And now the XO.

I’ve been struggling to find a way to justify having all this technology. I am currently planning on hooking the PowerBook to the television in our bedroom, so that we can watch movies stored on the NSLU2 storage device. I think that the PowerBook running VideoLAN plus a wireless mouse will provide almost all of the functionality I would have hoped for from a MythTV installation (since we don’t watch broadcast or cable television).

I guess the XO laptop will finally be a good motivator to learn Python so that I can figure out some fun uses for that device around the house.