IT Resource

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Program aims to provide access to IT equipment to remote and disadvantaged children throughout the world, and an Australian version has just been launched with a view to spreading the goodness to kids in Australian and Pacific Island communities.

The laptops in question are basic but rugged little beasts, designed specifically for the program, and something like 500,000 have been distributed around the world already. Currently just a few thousand will be avaialble for distribution in Australia but the program will be reviewed after this initial launch phase.

OLPC laptops have a basic 433MHz AMD Geode processor, 256MB of memory and 1GB of flash storage (plus an SD port for adding more). They come wireless ready, and run a version of Fedora with a GUI called Sugar, plus a range of open source Apps.

The machine has no moving parts and it is designed to be robust enough for hot and dusty climates and easily repaired in the field. There are three USB ports, audio jacks, stereo speakers and microphone, a VGA camera, a waterproof membrane keyboard and a clever LCD screen that is perfectly readable in bright sunlight.

This excellent scheme is making the laptops available via a donation scheme. Basically, a donation of $399USD will set aside one laptop for use in a remote community PLUS another laptop will be given to you. You can of course, then also opt to donate ‘your’ laptop so that the program benefits from 2 machines.

All in all, this seems like an excellent way to give kids out in the bush or in other remote communities a helping hand and a bit of access to IT equipment and ideas that they may otherwise not get.

OLPC Australia can be found at: http://olpc-australia.org.au/

TestFreaks have launched an Australian-based version of their popular TestFreaks site.

TestFreaks screenshot

TestFreaks is a useful one-stop shop that aggregates expert & user reviews, forum posts, images and technical material about a huge range of computing and entertainment items.

As well as pulling all of this information together, the site also provides aggregated ’scores’ such as the ’Freak’ score based on a combination of factors such as age of product, age of review, review source etc.

Usage

Product categories can be browsed, with various sort and filter options available to help narrow down product searches.

Selecting a product will pull together and present a wide range of information for you, including links to technical manuals and video reviews. Expert & User reviews and product related forum threads can be viewed all from the one place - with the handy option of showing local reviews only if required.

Products can be selected for comparison against each other, and the site also provides price information based on a number of price feeds.

The site also provides a handy ‘community’ type tool where people can submit and answer questions relating to various categoires.

Opinion

It has to be said that the Aussie version of TestFreaks currently has a fairly small range of categories, but you only have to take a look at the main TestFreaks site to see the huge range they have covered there – so we should expect to see steady growth in the range of products covered in the com.au site.
 
The site is currently in beta-mode and is undergoing regular improvements as a result of user feedback, but the interface is very friendly, clean and easy to use.

Well worth a bookmark for any gadget  and hardware freaks out there (both the com and com.au versions).

TestFreaks

review post by IT Resource