[OLPC India] Meerut experiment and some queries

[Arjun Sarwal]

Hi Shirish

On 7/12/08, shirish <shirishag75 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>  The first thing I would say is wow. Holden did have some great
> experiences and also wrote it well, plain and simple.

I agree.
Great documentation and some very great feedback by them.

>
> There are several queries I have which have hatched due to the read.
> Some of the questions may be stupid and they may be on the wiki or not
> but still :-
>
> 1. From what I have read the XO doesn't have its own hdd. Put simply
> it uses USB interface to interact with an external media or puts the
> data on a school server.

It has  a 1GB Nand Flash. There is no hdd to avoid having moving parts
inside (to keep it robust)

> Has there been any tests done as to what speeds data moves to & fro
> from the machine to the external hdd. AFAIK USB1 tops ranges between
> 1.5 Mbit/s (Low-Speed) and 12 Mbit/s (Full-Speed) and USB2 at 480
> Mbits with the proposed USB-3 at 600 MB/S . Also if its USB2 then is
> it the MicroUSB connectors?
> http://www.usb.org/press/pressroom/2007_01_04_usbif.pdf
>

The USB is  USB 2.0.

> 2. Using such a system has anyone at anytime used the XO to run sugar
> as well as Debian/Ubuntu and has put a howto of the same on the wiki.
> I'm sure somebody may have tried. If somebody has a link feel free to
> add the same.
>
> 3. Is the Wireless mesh networking/wi-fi mesh and USB-Ethernet on the
> go different hardware and follow different paths? If so, couldn't they
> be combined to give better bandwidth? There are applications in
> GNU/Linux IIRC which allow you to do this.
>
(Sorry I don't know of the above two points)

> 4. The XO has GPS . Couldn't it be used to plot places and things for
> like openlayers. Not for students but for teenagers and older.
>

The XO doesn't have GPS. But it has 3 USB ports through which any
commercially available GPS can be connected.

> 5. Adobe-flash :- While I see you guys have used gnash why not also use swfdec?
> swfdec is also blessed by GNOME as well.
>
> Another thing didn't adobe release quite some documentation about its
> format and stuff couple of months ago? Also isn't it now an ISO
> standard. The wordings in the wiki for Adobe flash needs to go a bit
> of change as well as look for free flash implementations.
>

AFAIK Adobe only opened up  specifications to some of its formats.

> That's all for now, Any and all answers appreciated.
> --

I've answered as much as I knew.

regards
Arjun

>  Regards,
>  Shirish Agarwal
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-- 
Arjun Sarwal
http://dev.laptop.org/~arjs
http://youtube.com/watch?v=SwcSEcfR464