Re: [olpc-software] graceful handling of out-of-memory conditions

["Dean T. Johnson" <dtj uberh4x0r org>]

Havoc Pennington wrote:
> While I won't bother to do a web search and quote stats ;-) I have the 
> impression that in the US people only use these Outlook-style mailers, 
> IMAP, etc. if their email account is provided by either school or 
> work; personal accounts are predominantly web mail of one kind or 
> another.
>
> On top of that, it seems to be widely accepted that teenagers talking 
> to teenagers these days use IM instead of email virtually always, 
> using email only to talk to adults or web stores or what have you.
>
> What this means is that a kids' laptop in the US could easily just 
> punt and say "get a hotmail/gmail/yahoo account"
>
> I won't pretend to know how email fits in to One Laptop Per Child, but 
> if a "thick client" mail app is uninteresting to US teenagers, perhaps 
> there are creative ways to avoid needing one on the global laptop too.
>
> Possible questions, Where does the IMAP server live in the envisioned 
> One Laptop Per Child deployment? Could a webmail server live there 
> instead for example? To what extent will the kids be using some sort 
> of chat, vs. email, and who will the kids be chatting with or emailing?
I totally agree, but doubt that it could be done effectively. In my use 
model for users in less than ideal conditions (think African bush), 
which bears absolutely no resemblence to probably anybody elses, is that 
they might have periodic connection to the net. In this case, a web 
browser only model would preclude looking at the email later and a 
responding while off-line.

Perhaps someone could write a browser plugin or two that would do the 
various tasks of a mailer. Basically use the browser as an interface 
framework.

   -Dean