Support

From OLPC

Contents 1 Thank You North America 2 Give One Get One Update 3 Getting Started, Troubleshooting Resources 4 Community/Live Support 5 Further Documentation Forthcoming 6 Maintenance/Repair and Community-Building 7 How do I report a bug? 8 Older Support Page & Demo Notes

Thank You North America

The generous G1G1 donors of North America have given of tens of thousands of XO laptops to children in developing countries, including these new XOers in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (Photo by Carla Gomez Monroy, Learning Consultant, OLPC, 17 Jan 2008) 07-2

Give One Get One Update

Important information about the first G1G1: The deadline for activation of the T-Mobile accounts is June 30th. If you have not activated your account, please do it today! OLPC will not be able to help you after the 30th.

If there are additional issues or concerns (replacement laptops, bad shipments) from the first G1G1, please send an email to: HELP @ LAPTOP . ORG

OLPC has begun planning for the next Give One Get One (G1G1) program which will be available to the US, Canada, and several other countries. It is expected to launch later this year. Please check our website for more information after September 1.

Getting Started, Troubleshooting Resources

• Learn about your XO laptop and what it can do or download the Getting Started Guide pdf (17.5MB).

• Our Community User Guide has more detailed information about the XO

• For common problems, please check our Troubleshooting Guide.

• Your child can read an online book

• If your XO laptop is defective—and you received it through the Give1Get1 program—please call 800-201-7144 within 30 days of receiving it.

• Check our Support FAQ, which is our new and quickly growing "Knowledge Base" of users' Frequently Asked Questions.
  Check the Give1Get1 FAQ for "customer service" (really Donor Services) questions.
  Check the longer Ask OLPC a Question for a wider range of answers, as well as the more general Official OLPC FAQ.

• If you are stuck, please email us at "help AT laptop.org"; make sure to include a detailed description of your problem! We apologize for the current delay in responding to some emails, as we staff up volunteers. Contact "holt AT laptop.org" if you want to join our Community Support Volunteers, either online or in person in Cambridge, Massachusetts. To apply, send us a note detailing your talents, motivations and a phone number we can use to reach you. Thanks!

• Join our community forums—below—for more direct participation and responses.

Community/Live Support

XO laptop owners are passionate about helping each other, in keeping with OLPC's constructionist learning mission within developing countries. You too can learn about the XO and its activities, collaborating on the issues that matter to you most, by exploring OLPC's many great community forums:

• NEW: Support Forum - If you can't find your questions on the wiki, ask them on the newly relaunched community forum website.
• XO Roadshows - See the XO in action

• Initiate/join a local users group. Online forums are emerging everywhere. Almost 100 regional US/Canadian /user groups have recently been announced. Here's a great worldwide summary of Emerging OLPC Communities. Finally independent Tech Support groups are also blossoming, such as this new Tech Support Community.

• Please join our Live Chat on the web! Advanced users can download IRC software and explore many OLPC chat channels.
  You can also access IRC on your XO laptop using the XoIRC activity.

• Join a mailing list: http://lists.laptop.org
  

For example: community-support
For example: olpc-open.
For example: community-news
For example: grassroots

• Read/Comment on OLPC developers' blogged newsbits:
  http://planet.laptop.org
  http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/community-news/

• Educators and others may get involved at many different levels:
  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Getting_involved_in_OLPC
  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Participate
  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contact_OLPC
  http://laptopfoundation.org/en/participate/
  Or email "volunteers AT laptop.org"

Further Documentation Forthcoming

• A number of people are working on more formal manuals.
  Links will be posted here when these mature, EG. see the User Guide which is making great strides.

• Up-to-date Release Notes are forthcoming, as XO software upgrades are released going forward into 2008.

• You can help at OLPC Publications.

Maintenance/Repair and Community-Building

Each location worldwide is encouraged to establish a tech support center for local hardware repairs and replacement. We encourage the students to be involved in the repair as much as possible. Some ideas on this have been written up in the Laptop Service Program Ideas.

We strongly encourage you to get involved by initiating/joining a local users group, many of which are listed above.

See Disassembly for instructions on taking apart your XO. Do NOT remove the watch battery on the mother board if you disassemble your machine; prior to the Q2D07 version of firmware, this can result in the computer becoming unusable.

RMS Logistics may offer Post-Warranty Repair Support at their North American repair facility, after your 30-day Warranty expires.

How do I report a bug?

We are very interested in bug reports. Instructions are available at submitting bugs. Summary: Please report bugs by sending email to "help AT laptop.org". (Developers, please continue to file bugs in our tracking system.)

We are also interested in your suggestions for enhancements to our system.

Community input and collaboration is vital to the success of OLPC. Thank you for your participation.

Older Support Page & Demo Notes

Our Older Tech-Oriented Support Page is increasingly dated, but may offer archival context to the technically savvy.