I have to ask…

To reveal the fathomless depths of my geek depravity, one Friday a month I get together with fellow alumni and current students of my International Science and Technology program and we have a journal club, where we've read some papers on a specific topic (last month was science policy and the presidential candidates, this month is genetically-modified food). It's a fun way to spend a Friday night, as it naturally ends up at a bar or restaurant for continued discussion.

Anyhow, so, I've been trying to use my OLPC XO as my carry-around laptop, which means I store PDFs on it, write notes, and so on, and was reading the articles for this Friday on the commute this morning (one PDF kept crashing the Reader activity...), and as I packed up, a fellow commuter asked; "so....is it a laptop? ..word processor?"

I gave her the 10 second speech on OLPCNews, then we intersected again aboveground and I gave her the 30-second; great technology questionable implementation plan speech and pointed her to OLPCNews and Laptop.org.

Having used the XO for a few days now, I'm often frustrated with it, but WOW IS THE SCREEN COOL. Full -- no -- even better readability (in black and white) in full sunlight? You've gotta wonder why all laptops don't have that feature.