I picked up one of these thingsat the local thrift this evening. At first I thought it was one of those “Leappad” notebook style learning toys, but the closer I looked I realized it was like nothing I’ve seen before. I remembered that there was some world laptop initiative for kids a few years ago but never followed it as to whether it took off.
So… in playing with this thing it’s kind of neat to review all the design elements. It’s in perfect condition and I’m almost thinking of bringing it to the next business review meeting as a lark. Those little wireless antenna ears are hilarious!
I notice it has a Mozilla based web browser and I’m trying to figure out how to get it on my wireless network, but when I press the green key that looks like a wireless connect button it starts searching for a “mesh network”. Can this thing work on a standard B/G wireless network. I have no docs.
It looks like it’s compatible with 802.11b/g, which is the most common protocol version for wireless routers and other home wireless networks. The ‘mesh networking’ thing, 802.11s, is apparently just an amendment to the other 802.11 versions specifying how the network changes when one device comes online or offline unexpectedly. I didn’t really follow that.
I don’t know what you need to do if it doesn’t detect your wireless network as a viable mesh, though. Reading further down the OLPC article, it does say it’s supposed to autoconnect to a mesh, and that the data transfer speed is set to be lower than usual, as a battery saving measure.
Hmm… I wonder if I need to remove the security protocols for it to detect the network. My SSID is set to be hidden but most notebooks detect it as “unknown” and let me input the connection parameters directly…
They have a python script that will supposedly step you through the configuration process, but how you download the script without an internet connection is an exercise left to the reader.
Well, according to the article, it does have an SD slot, as well as USB, which means you can download whatever you may need, onto another computer, then transfer it via one of these methods.
I played with one of those XO OPLC laptop a year or so ago. The linux based Sugar OS at the time did not support WPA encryption, so I couldnt put it on my network. It only supports WEP, which is easily hacked. You need to do this to enable WPA:
Thats a non-standard behavior for a laptop and Im not surprised to see the XO not do that. There’s absolutely no reason to turn off SSID, it causes too many problems and even a non-determinted attacker can detect your network with very simple tools. Leave it on, just make sure you have proper WPA with a decent passphrase.
