Peru Upgrade process.

[John Watlington]

On Jun 7, 2008, at 12:13 PM, C. Scott Ananian wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 10:44 AM, John Watlington <wad at laptop.org>  
> wrote:
>> Look, the reality on the ground is that Peru has at least 15K  
>> laptops in
>> the field running 651/653/656 that need upgrading.    They will  
>> not have
>> school servers deployed for another three months.
>
> I understand this.
>
>> If upgrade
>> (not reflash) requires more than inserting a key,
>
> I don't believe this.

Yes, this is the debatable part.

In speaking with Carla today, she said that they've had
many problems getting teachers to follow simple directions
like these.    And the upgrade we are discussing (from
65x to 703) requires multiple keys as well as typing.

> or it wipes the
>> activation lease/the kids work
>
> I believe this.
>
>> this won't happen.
>
> OK, even granting this, why is this necessarily a bad thing?  This
> work has to be prioritized.  If the laptops in the field don't get
> updated until (say) 1Q 2009, is that necessarily a bad thing?  Should
> I be working on this rather than, say, making Uruguay's upgrades and
> security work?

I understand that prioritization must happen.
But if I don't even get it on the list of "desired features", as you  
seem
to be arguing against, it will never happen.

> It seems reasonable to expect that machines in the field will not be
> updated until the teachers come in from the field for training.  The
> teachers will be taught about the new release (UI changes, new
> activities, etc), and given instructions and a USB key for updating
> the machines in the school.  They can schedule the update for a
> holiday when they've got time to follow the instructions to update the
> machines.  "Open up a terminal and type this" isn't nearly as
> impossible as you are making it sound.  Peru actually has a process in
> place for this training.

I'm aware of their training process.   That is part of my concern.

> Yes, we can imagine better, but I'm not
> convinced the current process isn't Good Enough.

Go Celtics,
wad