Repair workshop this Saturday at OLPC HQ

This Saturday we’re holding a repair workshop and presentation — if you haven’t torn down your XO and rebuilt it from the motherboard up, now’s your chance to try on someone else’s machine — and to learn how to break down and rebuild one in under half an hour, with nothing but a Phillips screwdriver!

We’re holding a workshop Saturday through the early afternoon. RSVP if you’re planning to come. The machines worked on will primarily be XO-1’s, since those are still the machines most likely encountered in the field. The major differences on the 1.5 make these sorts of repair much easier, not more complex — there’s little reason to take apart the bottom on a 1.5, for instance, since the keyboards just pop out.

Tom Brady handles the XO

Tom Brady stopped by the OLPC offices last week (you can see him in our group photo below!) and really got into the project. He wrote about the visit on his blog yesterday in his Insider Update at tombrady.com. It was a real pleasure to meet him – we spent over an hour talking with him and showing him the XOs. He spent some of the time shooting video clips about the laptops, with shout outs for bloggers and a few specific sites.

Tom took a couple XOs back home with him when he left (along with one of the lovely bags Scott and I acquired from the artisans of Cuzco)… Giselle is from Porto Alegre, one of our earliest school trials, and an enormous star there. I wonder if we can get a photo to send them!