ok this is my newest update:

 we have it working with the lynksis now but still no email with my pin number - no t-mobile account.
I can use it all over the house, bought a full size keyboad and tiny mouse, still fun playing with it.
We shared it with the 4 - 60 year olds and only 1 of them was really interested - the others not to much.

Other folks are sharing:
It was a hit with the 2 & 3 year old, who fought for time with it, in spite of the fact that neither had a clue what it was doing. 
The 78 & 80 year-olds were only mildly interested.  All of the techie professionals in the family were fascinated, and also frustrated with how slowly it starts up and changes tasks. 
XO DID work with our linsys router and encryption -- it connected without problem



I've become aware of the following:


1. US units for G1G1 are "unlocked" and not subject to the OLPC security system known as Bitfrost.
But the units for use outside the US are locked up with a really interesting security model.
Bitfrost isn't completely impletmented yet but the most important bits are.

2. they aren't making any cranks at all and haven't been for a long time - we aren't going to get them.

3. another  shares:
It's true that the wireless needs a lot of work, but I got it to work
with WPA2 with a Linksys WRT54GL (running dd-wrt).
There are instructions at:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/WPA_Manual_Setting
which involve downloading a script; running the script steps by hand
after consideration, instead of blindly running a script posted to a
wiki, is good too.
Of note: the normal wpa_supplicant configuration doesn't appear to be
used, it's a config file under ~/.sugar/default/nm/ instead.  The
script's resulting "bssids = " line does appear to be needed (I couldn't
get it working, across multiple reboots, until that line was present).
It might take a second reboot. 
Separately, the stripped down gecko-based browser supports HTTPS but
ships with just one certificate authority, OLPC's own; loading certs by
clicking on an application/x-x509-ca-cert .crt file doesn't work.  But
get to the terminal, "su -" (passwordless) and then "yum install
nss-tools" gets you the certificate management tools; certutil is then
your friend.  Loading my own private CA in was just:
$ certutil -L -d ~/.sugar/default/gecko/
$ certutil -A -t cTC -d ~/.sugar/default/gecko/ -n 'GlobNIX 
Certificate Authority' -i globnixCA.pem
and lather, rinse repeat for any other CAs I cared about.
The devices ships with ssh and a running sshd.  Funky.  Getting my
OLPC-generated SSH keys off the device, with limited tools installed,
less funky.  Easiest for me turned out to be using interactive Python to
send an email; other approaches involve installing new RPMs.
Device ships with Python but not Perl.  Plenty of snake-themed
educational programming tools, no camels.
It's a different UI, make no mistake.  I mostly just "let go" and
explored and had fun, occasionally noticing things derived from the
underlying Linux kernel or X11.