In and Out of Education

Beyond its primary educational focus, the XO laptop has a lot to offer to users outside of education as well. Because of its unique design and distinctive feature, the XO laptop offers benefits beyond what the conventional laptop computer can, and these are useful in and outside education.

Low Power Usage

The XO laptop will run for many hours more than a traditional laptop thanks to its custom designed, highly efficient power saving features implemented at the hardware and software level. All this is transparent to the user, but allows the XO laptop to provide a user with many more hours of battery life, which could be crucial in many situations. A journalist covering a story on location, for example, may choose an XO laptop over a bigger conventional laptop which would run out of power much more quickly.

Human Powered

Should an XO laptop run out of power without access to an electrical outlet for charging, it can be easily recharged through human power, using a crank, a pedal or a pull-string. The pull-string, for instance, will produce enough charge to run an XO laptop for ten minutes for only one minute of pulling on a string. This makes the XO laptop particularly attractive in situations where power is unreliable or unavailable. It can also charge from other alternative power sources as well, like a small solar panel or even a car battery.

Although people in developed countries are used to relatively reliable access to electrical power, that often changes in situations of natural disasters or other disruptions. In these situations, not only would an XO laptop be the only light in the house of a family in a developing country, but of one in a developed country as well.

A journalist, blogger or any user needing power where no electrical power is available would also appreciate this feature. Combined with the XO laptop's many networking abilities, this would allow virtually unlimited, fully networked communications and computing at any time, regardless of power or traditional network availability.

Mesh Networking

Like electrical power, many people in developed countries are accustomed to fairly widespread and reliable access to the Internet and the vast connectivity it provides. But that also quickly changes in emergency situations caused by natural disasters and other disruptions.

It is in these times where connectivity is often most useful. When the existing infrastructure is damaged or unavailable, the XO laptops provides an instant ad-hoc, mesh networking which connects all other XO laptops within range together, which in turn connect others, and so forth. This allows users to communicate more effectively without the need to rely solely on mass broadcast systems like radio and television, which do not provide the type of direct communication most often desired in such situations.

Imagine if every household in a city had an XO laptop. They would cast a theoretically limitless mesh network over the city, allowing most people in the city to communicate directly with every other user in the aftermath of a natural disaster or other disruption to the normal network infrastructure in place. It could even provide Internet access to areas otherwise without through the use of the XO laptop's Internet sharing capability, which allow one XO with Internet access to share that access with other XO laptops, which extend it to others and so forth.

Even in normal situations, many poor children and adults in developed countries have either slow, unreliable dial-up access or no direct Internet connection at home. The XO laptop's mesh networking would be a viable alternative in these situations, and with its more socially-inclined networking interface, it may, in fact, be the start of a new networking revolution.

Ruggedness

Though a laptop touts portability as its main advantage, its vulnerability to the natural elements often limits this advantage. Water, dirt and heat would damage almost any laptop. The XO laptop, however, endures the elements well, and by design can stand up to much more abuse than any conventional laptop.

Since it is designed to use as little power as possible, the XO laptop is relatively cool internally compared to your average laptop. Therefore, it won't get your lap uncomfortably hot.

However, the XO laptop is designed to withstand extreme temperatures nonetheless, so computing on a hot summer day outside is no problem for the XO laptop, though it would easily cause a conventional laptop to overheat. The occasional rain-shower won't perturb the XO laptop either, as most of its otherwise more vulnerable areas are sealed or covered, including the keyboard. This also means even dirt has little chance of ruining this tough green machine.

Even dropping the XO laptop will not render it useless, as it has a thicker plastic shell than most laptops, its display is cushioned by internal "bumpers" to protect it, and it has no moving platter in a hard drive to get damaged, as it uses solely flash memory to store data internally, which has no moving parts, of course. Who wouldn't benefit from a rugged laptop like this?

Sunlight Reading

This is something no laptop so far can offer: Full readability in direct sunlight. While indirect sunlight can sometimes drown out the brightest laptop screens, the XO laptop has a unique mode designed specially for viewing the display in direct sunlight. This is unprecedented and effectively removes yet another limit conventional laptops must contend with.

eBook Mode

Like a tablet PC, but incredibly more affordable, the XO laptop can flip its screen and convert into eBook mode, in which one could comfortably read a book, or even play a game using the game buttons on the side. Combined with the excellent readability the XO laptop has in direct sunlight, it give new options for reading, browsing and even gaming outdoors.

Open Source Integration

The XO is engineered around an open source philosophy, where free, open, examinable hardware and software is presented to the user so that he may explore and learn at will, without restrictive EULAs, TOSs and licenses getting in the way. The XO has the support of a vast and free world-wide open source community rather than a corporation.

Users are not "locked in" and are free to examine, learn and modify their hardware and software. There are no nagging warnings to upgrade or purchase a full version. There is no antivirus application to worry about. The XO does not come with the obsessive consumerist mentality we have become accustomed to in much of the developed world, and that is a welcomed change for all.