Trouble with my OLPC

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I took advantage of the "give one, get one" One Laptop per Child (OLPC), and I have been pretty excited about this little computer's arrival. It came yesterday, and it's very cute. It weighs more than I thought it would, though. Two of us at our house have tried to figure out how it works, but we can't figure out anything.

I was able to play some notes on the Tam Tam music making program, but some of the keys didn't work. While I watched the Youtube Tam Tam tutorial about a week ago. I was unable to switch between instruments. Granted, I haven't read the instructions (available on the Internet only), but for the life of me I have no idea how the children will be able to learn. Theoretically, there is free Hotspot access for one year for purchasers, but there is no information about that, either. I wasn't able to connect to the Internet, but I didn't realize that you have to click on an icon that looks like a Tinkertoy.

Trying to figure out how to use the little computer was so frustrating, I think it may be a while until I try again. If this doesn't get easier pretty quick, maybe I can donate it to a disadvantaged child. However if the children for whom these were designed experience the frustration level that we have experienced around here, I can't imagine how they would ever have any interest in computers at all.

If you have purchased one of these little OLPC laptops for a child in your life for Christmas, run, don't walk to the toy store and buy a few more gifts. If this is your child's big present, and you have planned for hours of pleasure from this new toy, it's going to be a grim, grim Christmas.

UPDATE: We are making progress! We have now managed to make some sounds in Tam Tam that rival that mini pocket piano that I bought for a dollar a couple of years ago! We have also managed to make the little XO OLPC meow like a cat and moo like a cow! One of the neighbor children had a book with little keys on the right hand side maybe a dozen or more years ago that did exactly the same thing. We feel very clever, but with the OLPC too big for a paperweight and too light for a door stop, we feel it must have more to offer to avoid third world child rage.

UPDATE 2: We note that the OLPC laptop has easy keyboard access to the double s character for the disadvanged German children and an o with a slash in it for the children of the less developed area of Scandinavia. How cool is that?

UPDATE 3: We have managed to figure out how to take a picture with the OLPC. Unfortunately we can't figure out how to save it, but keep in mind the only resources we have are 2 additional laptops (which manage to connect to the Internet pretty easily, as opposed to the OLPC which can find the wireless connections but can't connect) and 19 collective years of education beyond 8th grade. We remain optimistic that the children of the world must be far smarter than we are.

UPDATE 4: I have managed to connect to the Internet, but pages load so slowly it is enough to make you wish for dial-up! I found a Googlepage once before I was able to connect, but now I can't find it at all. Also, I now have learned that troubleshooting the OLPC will be done by the children themselves, and they will help each other find solutions. This is pretty impressive. Since the laptops have apparently been shipped already to Peru, if you know any OLPC kids there, say perhaps the smarter ones (hopefully already possessing Ph.D.'s from MIT or University of Texas at Austin) would you please ask them to post up their info instanter? Also, please make sure they have an English version. I am in very bad need of their advice.

UPDATE 5: Having failed to find a pint-sized PhD to lend a hand with the OLPC, I've been looking around at the OLPC Wiki. There I learned that even though the OLPC has a built-in microphone, the "internal one doesn't work at this time," so its necessary to plug one in. I also discovered that Opera, a very nice browser, can be used on the little XO. Unfortunately, these are the instructions: "Installing Opera on test machines is easy. From a shell, run these commands as root: . . ." Right. Easy enough for those open-source Linux types, but for me? Apparently, the idea is that if you don't find what you need in your OLPC you'll just write up a little program to solve the problem post-haste. Even more puzzling is this: "If you are having trouble with rpm, just grab a tarball." Well, enough for the OLPC now, I'm off to go look for a tarball, whatever that is . . .