The New XO-1.5 HS: a blue, blue world
Part 2 of a review of the XO-1.5
Over 90,000 Uruguayan high school students will receive a new XO-1.5 HS (High School edition) laptop. So how is it different from the XO-1 that their younger classmates have?
From the outside, the XO-1.5 HS has the same feel — it’s the same size, and the same antenna ears… though they feel different somehow in dark blue. The color variation on the backplate is more limited — there may be just one set of colors to match the dark blue casing.
To make it easier to use for high school students, the keyboard features larger keys for larger fingers — and it’s now a standard responsive, ‘clicky’ keyboard rather than a waterresistant membrane. Its light/dark blue color scheme represents Uruguay’s national colors, more subtler than the bright green of the other XOs.
Since we redesigned the keyboard, we took the opportunity to make a few other handy changes. The new keyboard screws in and pops out without dismantling the bottom of the XO — taking 2 minutes rather than 15 to swap one out.
I tried it myself during my first XO teardown – the keyboard was probably the easiest thing for me to get out. We did a half tear down and photographed it, so we can also add guidelines for upgrading your disk on the 1.5′s motherboard. And now people seem to be making hybrids of XO-1.5s with the new keyboard (see our Flickr stream for more). I’ll post again when the new repair guide section is ready.
Don’t forget your shovel. » High School Edition said,
September 3, 2010 @ 4:55 pm
[...] pleased to learn that OLPC has developed a high school edition. A lot of the interest in my small corner of the world with the original OLPC was among tweens, so [...]
lucas said,
October 20, 2010 @ 11:35 am
vamo uruguay!!!!!!!!!!!
Peru’s new XO assembly lines | One Laptop per Child said,
April 11, 2011 @ 5:42 pm
[...] olpc sustainability. Between Peru’s interest in assembly, Uruguay’s recent interest in design for new audiences, and Paraguay’s interest in developing better software and OS builds, Latin American [...]
Lauren said,
August 7, 2011 @ 7:03 pm
If only the laptop weren’t so dark. It would look better if only the laptop’s keyboard and trim were blue, then the XO logo could have more color combinations, like previous versions
sj said,
August 11, 2011 @ 7:58 am
I’m inclined to agree, but the older Uruguayan children love it. Peru got some of these blue models as well. Now we are back to Green and White for the remaining XO-1.5s and the new XO-1.75s.