The prototype XO 1.5 laptops have arrived in Wellington - Some will be heading to Christchurch and Auckland in time for the weekend.

Grant with one of the XO 1.5 laptops

First thing we did - we pulled them apart. Inside in a new processor (faster), as well as a very different looking motherboard. We spotted 1Gbyte of RAM, and a 4GByte microSD card serving as the non-volatile storage.

They arrived with Sugar OS 0.8.4. This isn't a stable release, and the hardware is still being tested by people like us -- so finding a few things not working was to be expected.

We really like the new touchpad -- it's like you'd find on any "normal" laptop, instead of the fancy, kinda expensive one that the original XOs had. Now you'll notice the edge of the usable area if you stray too far.

There are some device drivers missing - such as the video capture - and the screen driver hiccups. But we did manage many hours of playing food force, which usualy crashes on the older hardware. Foodforce needs lotsa CPU and memory.

Some more structured testing will be this saturday's testing.

Auckland Saturday - 11:00 am @ The Windsor Castle 144 Parnell Road, Parnell - they have internet, Tabitha bring one of the XO 1.5 machines

SuperHappyDevHouse Aotearoa is a monthly hackathon, combining serious and not-so-serious productivity with a fun and exciting party atmosphere.

The whole thing is about rapid development, ad-hoc collaboration and cross pollination. Hardcore coders, l33t hax0r, passionate designers, and other types that enjoy software and technology development are welcome. If this sounds like fun to you, then you're one of us.

There's going to be a Mini Happy Dev House this Sunday at The Cross (pub on Abel Smith St - http://thecross.co.nz ). It's a chance for you to come and hack on your favourite projects with lots of like minded people.

As a special treat this month, Martin Langhoff of the OLPC foundation will be bringing some OLPC laptops which you can play with and even hack on if you want.

If you're interested in coming, you might like to list what you will be working on here: http://shdh.org.nz/wiki/mayprojects . Maybe you'll see something there that someone else is working on that might interest you.