I didn’t notice until today that OLPC 8.1.0 Build 703 was released a month ago (June 5).

What’s new in the official-703 (8.1.0) release?

The big end-user change is that closing the lid now suspends the XO and opening resumes operation. I was shocked that it didn’t do this from day 1.

The other big change is that applications (activities in OLPC-speak) are now updated separately from the OLPC Sugar OS itself. This makes sense but is a giant pain in the rear to perform. You need to save this separate download to a USB flash drive, reboot, let the updates install, remove the flash drive, and then reboot again. Yikes, Microsoft Windows is not as annoying as this for most application updates.

The OLPC XO has been a huge disappointment. I should have bought an Asus Eee PC 701 instead last winter. At least my daughter might have found that more interesting and actually used it.