Last night I attended my first Geek Night dinner in Bloomington, an event that happens every six weeks, and I will do all I can to attend the next one if I can. First of all it was a blast. Very relaxed with a number of the geeks, not necessarily myself, drinking rather large pitchers of Cerveza and talking Ruby on Rails, Ajax and VPN. I can follow somewhat, but mainly I just enjoyed the company. The highlights, no doubt, were the great people (thanks to Michelle, Felix, Bob and Gary!), but Felix broke out his OLPC computer and the room circled around him. I had planned to buy one last year, but I ran into some unexpected charges toward the end of the year so I am waiting until they put them back on the market.
From what I saw these where a real technological achievement and far more complex than what I could even imagine. I had seen enough video on them before their release to know that these were solid machines, but you have to see it to believe it. Unfortunately you can't just go into a Best Buy and touch one, which is a damn shame. For what most people use a computer for (wordprocessing, browsing, etc.) this is more than enough machine. And you can mount drives through its two USB ports and a place for an SD card. If you need mass storage, well, there you go. I don't think I will give up my laptop, but damn if I wouldn't want this for travel.
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Hey Tim! I love the idea of a Geek Night! We need one in my town.
How was the OLPC with rendering video on websites? Flash and so forth? Is it something a non-geek could use easily, or does it have a steeper learning curve?
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