XO Experiment

I love the browser on the XO, but I don’t like that it doesn’t have normal bookmarks (or if it does, I’m not sure what I’m doing). It scales everything nicely and does CSS very nicely. But I wanted my CTRL-L to highlight my web address and CTRL-D to bookmark a site. So I caved and followed these very easy instructions to install Opera (looks like a version from Jan. 2007).

Opera is more than a secure web browser, it’s also an RSS and Atom feed reader, bittorrent client, email client, and IRC client. It also has many keyboard shortcuts that make navigating on the XO easy.

It’s not perfect, but it works; it’s got bookmarks (favorites) they way you’d expect it. The downside is it doesn’t scale anything on the 1200×900 pixel screen and things appear really small, the XO browser normally scales to 840×630 and it appears very legible.

Plus they’ve got some tips on configuring the keys for eBook/tablet mode. We’ll see what I end up using for the long run…

I just made working on the XO seem so much better! All I did was plug in a USB mouse! Honestly, I think some of my issues with getting used to it have revolved more around getting used to the track-pad than the OS.

The first 90-seconds with the mouse makes me fell like I’m using a different computer. I’m totally floored at how much more intuitive everything seems now. The operating system feels like I just got a upgrade. If you’ve got one of these laptops, get a mouse and try it out!

Okay, so now I’m talking it up too much and you’ll have expectations that are too high, but you do have to try it.

FYI - A USB Keyboard works too!

Technorati Tags: Keyboard, Mouse, puppy, USB, XO, XO laptop

The LCD display is great in all areas (other than it’s size).

Color - The colors are great, I haven’t done any testing on the range but the few photos I’ve pulled up look beautiful.
Size - The size is small it’s only 7.5 inches across.
Pixels - it’s 1200 × 900 and the amazing thing is that it’s 200 dpi (I think most LCD displays these days are 85-100-ish, maybe 120).
Outside use - Using the LCD in direct sunlight gives an excellent image. The color goes away but you are left with a crisp grey-scale image. You’ll want to dim the LCD since you’re probably just wasting battery life. You’ll probably want to site so the sun is hitting on the display, but it hasn’t been nice enough out for me to try it like that for an extended period.

I can’t wait to use this outside on a nice sunny day instead of sitting inside. I can be on the porch, the park or the beach and be typing or maybe reading an eBook on it (I haven’t tested that out yet).

So the only problem for me, the display is a little small and the dots are way small. Most of the software does use normal size fonts and the higher dpi just makes it look crisper (the web browser pretends to be 840×630, instead of 1200×900 pixels, and the XO scales to give really crisp text). But some of the games (like SimCity) use such small dots for everything it’s really hard to see. I’ve found myself using my reading glasses a lot for using the XO (usually I only need reading glasses sometimes at night and sometimes in the morning). Enlarging the fonts work but you’ve got such a small precious amount of screen space you hate to waste it if not necessary.

Technorati Tags: 200 dpi, backlight, Display, LCD, LCD Display, XO, XO laptop