Joel Stanley

Joel Stanley our guest speaker is a University Student who studies Electrical Engineering. He chose to study Electrical Engineering because he was at a tour at the University of Adelaide and the tour motivated him. Joel’s project was producing XO’s; he tested how much heat the XO can handle. The XO can take heat up to 60 degrees Celsius; it was tested in a pie oven/warmer. Joel also tested how much power the XO uses; he has tested each component in the XO to see what uses the most power. He tested over 40 parts in the XO.


He then explained to us what M.I.T (Massachusetts Institute Technology) is. At M.I.T there are a lot of smart people there. Joel then told us some guys from M.I.T started Guitar Hero, which is a well known game; they now make millions from it

Joel’s favourite operating system is Linux because he finds windows annoying and Linux is free open source software, Linux allows users to change the free software in Linux without being sued.

Joel took a weekend trip to Romania; he spoke to some people and explained to them what the XO is. Most of the computers in Romania run Windows, changing operating systems would cost too much.

Joel told us who the person who made the display for the XO is Mary Lou Jepsen. He also told us she was working on a project that would allow adverts to be projected onto objects. She really wanted to project adverts on the moon.



Joel then explained some more about the XO, the antennas are in the rubber clips on the side which lock the XO when it is closed.

He told us he stayed in America for 3 months, he said told us he didn’t think of it as a job, instead it was a fun thing. He then showed us a video of two kids fixing the XO, they disassembled it and fixed everything and then reassembled it. This proves any kid can fix the XO. He then showed us the XO’s connecting to each other, it allowed people with XO to connect and chat with each other, do activities together and do homework together.

I thought it was cool when Joel Stanley came in tell us what we wanted to know, I hope more guest speakers come in.

Sugar Impressions

My first impression of Sugar is that the operating system is very fun to use, the games on it are very fun. I think the operating system is used for group activities. I played the Shape game on sugar with dude, gijoe619 and displayname07. Sugar had some really interesting and fun other activities, there is chatting, games, and other fun activities. I also noticed the loading of the applications, the loading of everything is very fast. The operating system can be used on normal computers and the Xo/olpc.