OLPC has announced its software goals for the next-generation XO Laptop. While the group isn’t ready to launch an XO tablet yet, the XO-1.75 Laptop will have a touchscreen display, and the software developers are working on adding support for multitouch gestures — which will also come into play when the tablet is ready for release. As part of the…
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The original OLPC XO Laptop sparked the netbook revolution by showing that laptops could be tiny, cheap, and still pretty useful. But the laptop also broke the mold in a few other ways, by using a spill and dust resistant membrane keyboard, a durable plastic frame, and an innovative user interface called Sugar OS. While Sugar was designed to make…
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Sugar OS is the custom Linux user interface designed for the OLPC XO Laptop. Sugar on a Stick is a project that lets you run Sugar from a USB flash drive, no XO laptop required. I first checked out Sugar on a Stick earlier this year, when it was still a bit rough around the edges. But at the Netbook…
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The new OLPC XO 1.5 laptop might not look very different from the first generation XO laptop. But it has a faster VIA processor, and at least one neat software trick: Users can switch between the Sugar OS and a GNOME desktop environment in just about 15 seconds. Here’s what that means. Sugar was a custom user interface designed to…
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The netbook revolution has its roots in the One Laptop Per Child project. OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte envisioned getting cheap, educational, and open source laptops into the hands of millions of children around the world. Things haven’t really worked out that way. Four years after the project begun, only 900,000 OLPC XO Laptops have been distributed to children. That’s not…
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It’s been a while since I first checked out Sugar on a Stick, a project that lets you install the OLPC XO Laptop’s operating system on a USB stick and run it from pretty much any netbook. It’s an interesting project, and the Sugar OS is full of educational goodies designed to teach kids with little prior computer experience how…
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The OLPC XO Laptop may have sparked the netbook revolution by showing it’s possible to create and mass produce a low cost but quie capable computer. The project provided the spark that led to the creation of the Asus Eee PC, HP Mini Note, and scores of other low cost ultraportable computers. But there are a few things the OLPC…
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Those wacky OLPC folks have been working with Microsoft on a way to cram Windows XP onto the XO Laptop for a few months now. And while we’ve already seen video evidence of Windows running on the hardware, Gizmodo has what appears to be the first video showing a single XO Laptop dual booting Linux and Windows XP.Here’s how it…
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I tend to avoid writing stories about the OLPC XO Laptop because it’s not really targeted at consumers. I’m much more interested in laptops you can walk into a store and buy, or at least order online from Taiwanese dealers. But if Nicholas Negroponte hadn’t turned his dream of a low cost laptop into reality, it’s possibel that the Asus…
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