XO-2

[david at lang.hm]

On Thu, 22 May 2008, Andres Salomon wrote:

> Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 17:33:24 -0400
> From: Andres Salomon <dilinger at queued.net>
> To: david at lang.hm
> Cc: devel at lists.laptop.org
> Subject: Re: XO-2
> 
> On Thu, 22 May 2008 14:07:26 -0700 (PDT)
> david at lang.hm wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 22 May 2008, Andres Salomon wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 22 May 2008 13:33:10 -0700 (PDT)
>>> david at lang.hm wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 22 May 2008, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> There will almost certainly be a 'virtual XO-1' mode for
>>>>> compatibility, where the lower touchscreen will display a keyboard
>>>>> and touchpad like the XO-1.
>>>>
>>>> a touchscreen based keyboard is far inferior to a real keyboard.
>>>> it's
>>>
>>> So plug a USB keyboard in if you're going to be doing some serious
>>> typing.  If you just need to type in a few lines, the virtual
>>> keyboard would be fine.  A USB keyboard gives far more flexibility
>>> than XO-1 currently has in terms of languages, layout, cost, and
>>> manufacturers. Being tied to a single keyboard/touchpad
>>> manufacturer makes everyone sad.
>>>
>>> http://www.pricewatch.com/keyboards/usb.htm shows ~$4 for a basic
>>> keyboard, and bulk rates could probably do even better..
>>
>> this makes it a $79 laptop, and I don't think it's really a good idea
>> to say that every kid will carry the XO-2 and a keyboard everywhere.
>>
>
> Of course not.  Kids can leave the keyboards at school, and share them.
> You're assuming that kids will even _want_ keyboards.  Maybe they'll
> want to use something equivalent to Dasher, or they'll find themselves
> becoming quite proficient w/ the on-screen keyboard, or perhaps the
> processor will be powerful enough to support speech-to-text software, or
> a stylus combined with handwriting recognition software,
> or maybe they'll prefer writing on paper and just use the XO for reading
> ebooks (despite having access to all this wonderful QWERTY technology,
> there are certain tasks that I prefer to use paper and whiteboards for),
> or maybe they'll come up w/ some radically new input system that
> we haven't enough thought of.

people have been predicting the death of keybards for decades, it hasn't 
come close to happening yet, and I really don't expect it to happen in the 
next year or two.

there are a lot of things that you want to enter text for that must be 
done on a computer, anything that involves text and collaberation for 
example (e-mail, etc)

also, while you can choose to not use the computer for things like term 
papers, book reports, etc. not being able to do so is drasticly limiting 
the usefulness of the computer.

David Lang