While the XO Laptop is an interesting piece of hardware, two of its best features are out of reach for North Americans who want buy one in the current “Buy One, Send One” promotion.
- You don’t get the power crank that lets you power the machine away from mains electricity.
- You don’t get the critical mass of machines to create mesh networks, independent of an ISP.
And I don’t see repairs, upgrades and services being offered. So I’m going to decline getting one myself, even if I can understand why others would want one.
I’ll wait for the next version of the Acer Eee sublaptop, due out this spring. Probably the 4 gig memory version, with the camera. It shares the same size with the XO and is even lighter. While not a powerhouse, it can take the Xubuntu version of Ubuntu Linux, though I might stick with the Linux distribution it already has and is configured for non-Linux users.
Plus it looks like an adult’s computer. And I hope it comes green then.
Here are a couple of good sites reviewing the current version:
“Asus Eee PC Initial Hands On and Video Review” (NotebookReview.com)
Note: the first video is allegedly not available, but I found it in another version of the same review. Below.
