HOWTO Overclock an XO laptop from One Laptop Per Child
Wayan sez,
Link (Thanks, Wayan!)
One major complaint about One Laptop Per Child's XO laptop, is the speed of its Geode LX 700 CPU that runs at 433mhz. Most experienced computer users find it a little slow, and often compare it to computing in the late 90's.On the other hand, OLPC's target market, children in the developing world who don't have a Dell or Xbox for comparison, don't seem to mind.
Still, for the serious geek, there is an easy fix for a slow processor: overclocking. Our field tester results:
For the record. 566mhz is a 30% improvement in processor speed over the stock 433mhz, and 233mhz is a 40% improvement in memory speed over 166mhz.
On average, I saw a 21.8% improvement in usable system speed at these overclocked ratings.
(Image: Measure on the XO Laptop, a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike image)
the latest
latest episodes
We were pretty disappointed with the XO. It is definitely still a beta product. The mouse pad is very wonky. There is no easy way to update or get new applications. The networking is awful. The hardware itself seems rather rickety.
The kids find it amusing, but not for so very long.
I got caught up in all the hype in ordering, but I found, once it was in my hands, that all the reviewers were just aping the press releases and not casting a critical eye on the product itself.
There have been a lot of complaints similar to mine on the XO user forums. Also, there is a pretty strong fanboy element that flames anyone critical of their pet.
What I don't understand about XO is why the developers got caught up in the hardware. Computer hardware is cheap. A decent computer can be had for less than the price of a new XO, but the software is not ported to anything but the XO platform. Sop the project is not so much as getting the XO experience out there, as it is to selling the hardware. Sort of an Apple Computer for the Third World. Then there is this weird sniping against Intel because the dare to compete with the OLPC project.
So yes, I'm disappointed. I'm not a computer genius, but I'm certainly more computer literate than much of the intended audience for this product, and I can't make heads or tails of getting the thing to be truly useful.
Bah, just a lot of hype. Reminds me of Miro (sorry, I just couldn't resist.).
I enjoyed my time using an xopc from the g1g1 campaign. Of course the XO platform is in its infancy, and it takes some time to become used to XO conventions, and managing work through the journal, but i expect that this OS has the potential to evolve to form a very robust platform.
I really liked some of the included packages, but was confounded by others. Work certainly needs to be done in unifying the interfaces between packages. It would be very nice to see a package manager, to update software and get new packages.
The hardware is fantastic and it would be great to see the software become just as robost. I really see alot of potential in commercializing the solutions they have made for this device.
There really was nothing quite as nice as being able to turn the backlite off for the display and sit outside in the sun, and still be able to read the screen very clearly.
I usually look at the laptop from the perspective of "Wow! I wish I had this when I was a kid!"
I'm thirty. I grew up around Commodore 64s and VIC-20s. I didn't have internet till high school. I'm sure many of you grew up with very different experiences depending on your age or culture.
Now we live in an era where educators are trying to grasp and deal with the fact that grade schoolers are meeting online at home to do homework assignments as a group.
It's a hard thing to know what is really important in computing for kids and where they come from at any point in time. I think the XO laptop is great for people who have little or no experience with computing. I also think it's fun for people who do have experience.
@1: while this may get me dismissesd as a fangirl, i had serious problems with the touchpad which were resolved completely by an upgrade to the latest build (#656). installing software is as easy as yum install foo, and while it's clunky to use stuff outside the context of Sugar, it works fine once you have it running.
i'm still holding out hope that the real test is going to be getting these machines into the hands of kids in the developping world, say what we will as people who already use bigger faster machines.
I teach in an american public school, in a town which was recognized this year as one of Money Magazine's 100 best places to live.
Our school labs are currently running nine year old machines with 633 processors from the late nineties. Their hard drives are stuffed with educational and administrative "bloatware", which makes them sluggish as a 433.
I have no more or less sympathy, honestly, for anyone who complains that using the XO is like using a computer from the late 90s. Because the well-kept secret in modern public education in America is that, due to budget limitations, silly rules about budgeting which do not allow you to spend a bit more now to "upgrade" to a system in whichc omputers are leased, not purchased, fear of line-iteming, and deferred maintenance, the standard for schools these days is to use computers from the late 90s.
I'm not saying the third world doesn't deserve better. I'm saying that the testers who are "complaining" are probably comparing these machines to their own, not to the norm for the schools in (probably) their own neighborhoods. Maybe, in context, this is going to have to be acceptable for now.
What I don't understand about XO is why the developers got caught up in the hardware. Computer hardware is cheap. A decent computer can be had for less than the price of a new XO,
You mean you can get a decent computer for less than the price of a new XO. People in most of the world cannot, and even if they could, the amount of labor involved in setting up each different funky used computer would be massive.
In order for something like a computer-centric educational system to be viable, there needs to be a high degree of standardization, so software and firmware can be easily upgraded, interoperated, and mesh networks can form dynamically and organically. We've been trying for decades to abstract hardware from the OS, but it still hasn't happened fully - that's a way bigger battle than OLPC can tackle.
Furthermore, you can get a computer with better "specs" for the same price as an XO, but those specs aren't the whole picture. Is a decent used computer military-grade hardened against environmental damage? Is it readable in direct sunlight? Can it be operated off a car battery or small solar panel? Can it be used for 8 hours straight as an ebook? The metrics we first world computer users measure computers by (megahertz, megabytes, etc) aren't the same ones most of the world cares about.
I'm a bit disappointed that BoingBoing, which is a pretty avid supporter of Creative Commons didn't follow the CC license on the photo, which was shot by me:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/s4xton/2113469084/
-Aaron
I've been playing with an XO for a couple of days, and my initial reaction is much like ME's.
The touchpad response is clunky -- I can't make a continuous circle without it getting messed up by something. It's as if the CPU gets interrupted and drops some of the input.
I have a few dead or stuck pixels.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that mine came with build 656 installed. It took some fiddling to get WPA working, especially since I couldn't cut-and-paste between the terminal and the network manager without resorting to a USB mouse's middle-click paste.
I've had a few applications be unresponsive at times, and crashed the browser once.
Video looks very glitchy, that's probably due to the slow CPU.
Getting applications isn't hard though. Almost right off the main browser screen you can find some activities, and these install directly by just clicking the hyperlink. And if you install XO-get, that gives you a simple package viewer/installer outside the browser.
I think part of the agony for G1G1 is that the XO was meant to be used in a school setting, with other XOs, a school server, and with some teacher guidance. Outside of that setting, you have to resort to the wiki to learn about using it and updating it and installing new activities. That isn't a smooth consumer experience because there isn't a portal exlusively for G1G1. Plus without other XOs around you can't take advantage of the mesh collaboration, which is a major part of XO's appeal.
But as forgiving as I can be, the apparent clunkiness of the basic sugar activities worries me. That and the pad problems have me a bit disappointed.
Holding it in my hands, I'd say there's a lot more than just hype to this thing, but it doesn't quite feel ready for prime time either.
What I don't understand is why at a 433 MHz clock, it seems lethargic compared to my old Amiga 2000 that ran at 7.something MHz. Ami always was ahead of the times... Ahh, fond memories.
I still like my XO and think the G1G1 will do some good in the world. The display is brilliant, the e-book mode is great, and with the small size and convenient handle, it's not the computer on my headboard when I have to google or read boingboing in the middle of the night.
Still a few rough edges, but I was pleasantly surprised that the SD slot understands HCSD. I've got 8 GB in there now.
Aaron has the right to complain if his photo's been used without attribution. I've dropped Cory a heads-up note.
Hey, Aaron -- sorry about that, I missed that the image wasn't created by the same person who created the article. If it hever happens again (doesn't happen very often), you can email me and I'll fix it right away.