David Pogue’s recent review of the XO laptop (formerly known as the $100 laptop) got me thinking on how truly world changing this piece of engineering brilliance could potentially be - imagine every kid in the world having access to a personal computer and by extension, the Internet. It’s been in the works for some time now but actually seeing it in action gets me all excited thinking about the possibilities. Mr. Pogue does an excellent job of highlighting all the good stuff and also does so in video, something I feel the OLPC should take heed and do as well to better extol all the virtues of the XO.

The XO is packed with many smart and practical features. Here are some of the highlights:

  • A single keystroke can reveal the underlying code of almost any XO program or any Web page and allows it to be safely modified; this is a great idea - higher chances of some school kid from a third world South East Asian country improving upon or writing the next killer software app/widget/whatchamacallit.
  • A single battery charge lasts for 6 hours. It can last so long because it consumes less power than your typical laptop. This also allows it to be recharged by hand for where power is not available. The battery also has a longer lifecycle  and costs only $10 to replace; why doesn’t my relatively new laptop have a battery like this!
  • Mesh networking; every machine is literally a wireless router.

This November OLPC is running a Give 1 Get 1 campaign in North America whereby for every XO you purchase to empower a child in a developing nation, another one will be sent to you.

Here’s a quote from Seth Godin regarding the XO and how he feels it will change everything:

When you give a kid a net connection, access to wikipedia and to the rest of the world, things change fast. Things you wouldn’t necessarily predict. Like a ten year old who can diagnose his dad’s illness. Or a farmer that can ask his daughter to find out where to get a new part for the tractor.

One can’t help but wonder what the reported USD30 million (real-world cost or so I’m led to believe) spent to send the first Malaysian astronaut to space could have been better used on. Perhaps on these XOs - empowering the Malaysian children of today with technology and maybe, just maybe, someday in the near future we’ll have the the smartness and ingenuity to build our own spacecraft and then make a genuinely meaningful voyage to space.