[Olpc-open] Why is G1G1 program ending?

[Carol Lerche]

Steve -- I support providing some way to retain G1G1, perhaps limited to
ameliorate support burdens.  Even educational users will find the networking
"broken" however, unless they are using an xo for the school server, because
there is no other hardware available (that I have been able to find out
about) that supports meshing.  Thus, in using the xo-1's in an educational
environment one of them must be used as a school server, and that use is
currently disabled.  (I am facing this problem right now.)

So, "off-target" educational users (those in the US) do have wireless
problems.  There is not documentation of what to do to set up a school
server TODAY.  This just shows that the project is in need of more hands to
make lighter work.  I think even in the educational arena the staff has had
the "luxury" of doing each deployment themselves, in hand-holding mode.

I understand that I was privileged to get hardware in the US and am willing
to find workarounds and  am doing so.  But as someone who spent several
years supporting technology at a K-8 school as a parent volunteer, I think
you may find educational deployments more needy (because less tech-savvy)
than the geek community that we are lucky to have due to the G1G1 program.
I am counting on lots of new support for the XO and its infrastructure
showing up just because so many applications will be tried.

Carol Lerche

On Dec 29, 2007 1:25 PM, Steve Holton <sph0lt0n at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Dec 29, 2007 3:00 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb at cesmail.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > I'm not sure the "target educational users" have the same problems that
> > G1G1 recipients have. After all, various models of the XO are already in
> > use among the target users and what I'm seeing on the lists is a
> > different set of problems.
>
>
> I agree here.
>
> One oft-cited problem relates to connecting to certain brands of WiFi
> access points.
> Since the XO was intended to connect to a) other XO through mesh, and b)
> school servers through mesh, IMHO any XO which can't do that is DOA,
> anything else is unsupported behavior. (However, the decision to support
> 802.11 access was has already been made.)
>
> Another high runner is machines which, for a variety of reasons, the
> recipient thinks amounts to a DOA machine.  In some cases it's just
> misunderstanding, in some cases it's software fixable, in some cases it
> really is dead hardware. All of these could be handled as non-events if the
> XO's were being *handed to* the the recipient as part of an  XO arrival
> day at a school. Instead, it become a very frustrating and labor intensive
> process of remote diagnosis, remedial action over an email channel, or
> shipping charges and significant down time.
>
> There are the complications added by having to coordinate delivery with
> T-Mobile which disappear.
>
> There are cases were a software upgrade is in order, but insufficient
> infrastructure in place to complete the task. (no connectivity, no USB key,
> insufficient user skill, etc)
>
> And the constant distraction of adults (not kids) trying to use the XO as
> a laptop computer; wanting to load alternate operating systems, non-standard
> applications, or connect to challenging web sites.
>
> --
>
> Steve Holton
> sph0lt0n at gmail.com
>
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>
>


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astonish the rest."
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