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.)
<br><br>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.
<br><br>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.
<br><br>Carol Lerche<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Dec 29, 2007 1:25 PM, Steve Holton <<a href="mailto:sph0lt0n@gmail.com">sph0lt0n@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">On Dec 29, 2007 3:00 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <<a href="mailto:znmeb@cesmail.net" target="_blank">znmeb@cesmail.net</a>> wrote:<br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="Ih2E3d"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br><div><br></div>I'm not sure the "target educational users" have the same problems that<br>G1G1 recipients have. After all, various models of the XO are already in<br>use among the target users and what I'm seeing on the lists is a
<br>different set of problems.</blockquote></div><div><br>I agree here.<br><br>One oft-cited problem relates to connecting to certain brands of WiFi access points.<br>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.)<br><br>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
<b>handed to</b> 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.
<br><br>There are the complications added by having to coordinate delivery with T-Mobile which disappear.<br><br>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)
<br><br>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.<br><br></div>
</div>-- <div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c"><br>Steve Holton<br><a href="mailto:sph0lt0n@gmail.com" target="_blank">sph0lt0n@gmail.com</a>
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