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No email client at the moment, though one is in the works. I just use ssh (installed by default) to log in to my computer at home and check mail with mutt. According to /proc/cpuinfo, the process or is AMD Geode, running at 430MHz. In use, it doesn't feel particularly fast or slow to me. According to /etc/X11/xorg.conf, the screen looks to be 1200x900. In black and white mode, it looks like the screen is higher resolution still (it looks incredibly sharp) but I don't see any references to that in xorg.conf. The OLPC has 1gb of total flash storage space, with 327mb used by the basic system, leaving 698mb for additional programs / data. I have a usb flash thumb drive that I plan on using for space-intensive data (movies, music, etc). Surfing the web seems okay screen-wise because it's pretty decent resolution. I'm not used to the particular browser that comes pre-installed, but even if I can't get used to it, I could install something else later. For pre-installed graphics apps, it only has a simple (but pretty satisfying) paint program for kids. I assume you could install gimp / inkscape / etc later if you wanted. Regarding audio / video quality, I've heard on the freenode irc #olpc channel people saying they're watching movies on the OLPC and that the screen looks great, but I haven't tried it myself. I'd be impressed if the processor can handle smooth playback. I don't know if it has an ftp client installed by default. I don't see the "ftp" program anywhere. It does have ssh, like I said, and you can install additional applications with yum later. I don't know about how well it'd do for podcasts. The built-in mic is pretty low-res, but it has a mic input. YUM is the package manager and I don't know if it's tapping into the regular Fedora repositories, or something set up specifically for OLPC. I've read that you can download sugar Activities (applications) and install them from the Journal gui screen. There are new disk images being prepared continually and the next one to come is supposed to bring a lot of important updates (email, suspend / resume, etc). My machine seems to run for about 4 hours with the screen at full brightness. That is w/out suspend, so once that functionality is included, I assume it will increase somewhat. I hope all that is helpful.

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