Virtuoso hardware hacker Andrew "bunnie" Huang has posted a fantastic review of the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop, from a hardware engineer's perspective. Bunnie is the founder of Chumby, a truly elegant hardware gizmo, and he (literally) takes apart the XO and showcases the excellent design choices that went into it.
If I were to make one general comment about the OLPC XO-1, it's that its mechanical design is brilliant. It's a fairly clean-sheet redesign of traditional notebook PC mechanics around the goal of survivability, serviceability, and robustness (then again, I've never taken apart any of the ruggedized notebooks out there). When closed up for "travel", all the ports are covered, and the cooling system is extremely simple so it should survive in dusty and dirty environments. Significantly, the port coverings aren't done with rubberized end caps that you can lose or forget to put on–they are done using the wifi antennae, and the basic design causes the user to swivel them back to cover the ports when they are packing up the laptop to go. That's thoughtful design.
