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Big Delays, Small Laptops: OLPC XO Recipients Mad
PCWMike writes to tell us about the growing concern over the failure of OLPC to deliver laptops to some of its customers. PC World editor-in-chief Harry McCracken notes that record-keeping was poor for some of the people who paid via PayPal. A report on LinuxJournal also suggests that customer information was lost due to errors in the database software used by OLPC. Quoting PC World:
"OLPC spokesperson Jackie Lustig acknowledges problems with the ordering and the fulfillment process, but says the biggest challenges are a short supply of XO laptops and the organization's ability to meet consumer demand for the XO laptop. Some also wonder whether chronic delivery problems for Give One, Get One donors may bode poorly for the 15 countries slated to receive nearly 500,000 XO notebooks. Lustig says delivering in bulk to just over a dozen countries is infinitely simpler than processing and delivering 80,000 individual laptops."
They're really getting the hang of foreign aid. I applaud OLPC for their quick adaption.
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
Starry-eyed desire to save the world is a good drive, but fulfilling the orders and delivering on the promises requires a lot of mundane work. One needs to get "all corporationy" to provide consistently good service...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
He is absolutely correct; a half-million units shipped to just 12 to 15 destinations *IS* simple by comparison. Just look at the complexities of UPS' operations in moving 80000 packages within the boundaries of the US, and that becomes apparent.
Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha
From the summary:
"OLPC spokesperson Jackie Lustig acknowledges problems with the ordering and the fulfillment process, but says the biggest challenges are a short supply of XO laptops and the organization's ability to meet consumer demand for the XO laptop....Lustig says delivering in bulk to just over a dozen countries is infinitely simpler than processing and delivering 80,000 individual laptops."
But how can that be, if the problem is short supply of the laptop?
Cheers,
Ian
This OLPC is going to change the world. I've got mine now and it is wonderful exactly what is needed IMHO. They are trying to do something that is very very hard and they need all the encouragement and kind words that are to be found. I hope they solve their delivery problems smoothly soon. No lack of talent in this group of people.
They don't want to do distribution, shipping tens of thousands of things all around a continent isn't that easy.. Just getting payments information from paypal can be a hard thing to do.
Saying this will happen to governments orders as well is very strange, and uncalled for.
...but PC World, questioning OLPC's ability to deliver? And goodness me, look here: Intel and Microsoft with their alternative. No doubt Classmate sales-pitches will involve a lot of paraphrasing from articles of this type.
It seems that a lot of recent OLPC stories are being drummed up to try and discredit them, and it is a bit sickening.
McCrackin!? Hahaha... OK, so I'm immature.
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by moving to where you can't find them.
But but but....The database sotfware is open source...It couldn't have screwed up since there are so many eyeballs looking at the code.
And I can't even track my order in their online tracking database. First email went unanswered and second one got a response, but was missing any indication of when they would ship, just that they were overwhelmed with the response.
It looks like this eager and well intentioned group of people is trying to do it all but perhaps is best at developing the software and hardware. Perhaps they should focus on that and leave sales and distribution to people who are experts with these much different skills.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I ordered on the last day and paypal definitely took my money and gave it to OLPC. Those folx are doing something good but they are definitely disorganized.
I'm in Canada, and waited 7 weeks for my XO to arrive. No biggie. I've waited almost as long for Dell to ship correctly configured servers on occasion. Those were biggies. Were my expectations appropriate for each company? I think so.
I'm sure that OLPC will honor all their commitments and get these orders out as soon as they can. Sometime s**t happens, and things falls through the cracks. People should just take a deep breath, and ask themselves if they'd rather have their XO right now, or have the one they donated delivered first.
G1G1 doesn't stand for "Get one, give one".
If the online tracking database worked. As of now you type in your email address or order number and it can't find you. This leads one to believe that the order was lost even though payment was already extracted. At least with your Dell shipment, Dell could tell you the order was in the system and will ship in X time.
It wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that India seems to be the ones handling the support, and that they are the worst for such things, oops we lost your information...but don't worry it's ok. Just means you will have to wait extra long while we laugh at how stupid some big corporations are by outsourcing their work over seas seeing as their quality control is different then ours
I know someone in the textiles industry and you would not believe the stuff they pull, shipments of 10,000 units with one pant leg 5 inches shorter then the other, then they say something like, we can give you a small rebate or try to fix it after the fact, which means you miss your deadline, which means penalty, which means revenue loss.
And try to make them pay for it, your shipment will get stuck at the border on purpose, and stay there indefinitely. India is a piss poor country, you think they care if your shipment makwes it on time, when they have to worry about being able to get food to their homes, and find a way to
pay the rent as the 1$ an hour job doesn't cut it...India sucks
They don't have the funds to act like a real serious company. That would take millions of dollars of investment.
Oh, wait a second...
80,000 G1G1, at $400 per unit = $32,000,000. Since the "Give One" money really just goes into their general coffers, that's $16 million clear profit up front. A real startup would sacrifice its directors' children to be turn $16 million clear profit in 6 weeks.
You Goddamn hippy retards. You. Do. Not. Fuck over your strongest advocates. Do these people actually want OLPC to fail? Because they seem to be doing their damndest to make that happen.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The actual article is "Big Delays for Small Laptops", it's some of the people who haven't received them yet who are upset.
I was expecting mine (in Canada) some time in February based on the initial delays in shipping to Canada. So I was quite pleased when it showed up last week.
I guess that make me somewhat ineligible to advocate patience if you're still waiting for yours, but I can say that I wasn't disappointed in mine once it arrived.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
there are probably less hassles with this group than is seen in a normal business, but since they are being attacked by MS and Intel, they are in a small fish bowl. I wonder if and how many of the orders were purposely done incorrect to make sure that there were issues? It is the perfect form of an attack and certainly within the scope of how either company operates.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I donated the very first day they opened up the Give One Get One program and got my XO Laptop the Friday before Christmas (they sent an e-mail November 28th saying they were prioritizing first day donors and was trying to make delivery by Christmas).
The machine itself is really neat. The battery life and outdoors readability is much better than my personal laptop and it covers 90% of what I use my laptop for when I'm on the go anyways (Web browsing and using ssh to connect to boxes at work/home). If it weren't for the fact that the keyboard is too small for an adult for long periods of use, I might have replaced my laptop with an OLPC one.
Overrated Moderation: This posts sucks... because.
I ordered two of the laptops the morning of the first day by paypal, which charged my credit card. I received the laptops right on schedule. It is true that some folks did not, and some of them are screaming bloody blue murder. But it is also true that many of the bloggers who are making noise, are putting forth a very inaccurate story of what is going on. There is a concerted effort to smear the OLPC organization over this when the faults in the ordering process are clearly with third party companies. The OLPC organization is small, does not have a proffessionl department to manage spin, and is certainly being taken advantage of by people trying to take cheap shots to increase their hit rate.
The other side of the coin is the concerted effort by Intel and Microsoft to smash the OLPC and the XO laptop, because the thing is great. Really great. Very low power, Very high functionality. Great screen. Great open source software. Extremly sturdy. Excellent wireless abilities. And designed for children. Really not much to complain about when you get down to it.
Kurt
... sold them through 3 or 4 hand picked online retailers, such as Amazon and Newegg and others. That way they could have bulk shipped them to those retailers and let the retailers handle the details like they are well experienced in doing.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
They listened to all the market begging to release it to individuals. They do, and now it sucks. They should have maybe just kept to plan.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
A bit off topic, I know, but I'm sure I'm not the only one interested in knowing:
:(
Does anybody know if there is a chance for the G1G1 thing to happen in Europe too?
I could have gotten one of my inlaws in the US (yes, my wife is from the USofA) to get one for me, but then the issue had been getting it over here... Norwegian Customs would likely have slapped a big fat import tax on it
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
The actually source of all these stories might be interesting to people, instead of articles about the source. Since when did people stop being able to read primary sources and start being able to only read "news" articles.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/How_laptop_delivery_breaks
Get real dude.
Sorry but the majority of the OLPC bad press is because THEY DESERVE IT.
Did you ever think that some of their foolery needs an evil Microsoft just to dodge the issue? In other words - imply something that is not true but sounds good?
IOW - Political speech 101.
Talk about FUD.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I've shelled out $423.95 x 2 and am still waiting. And it's a shame that it's taking so long. But I'm happier that working-class kids in Mongolia (no, not "starving to death" people) have laptops, and I can wait. (I'm posting about it on THE INTERNET so clearly I'm not exactly struggling for 'net access.)
They had pro-bono donation of services from three (or more) different companies to handle ordering and distribution. Not having a logistics manager or dealing with the process openly *is* a shame. Lots of individuals unaffiliated have been volunteering their time, trying to help, but have been powerless to actually *do* anything, since the volunteers don't have access to all of the data sets.
Hopefully the next time they offer G1G1 they'll manage the order/delivery status themselves, they *should* be able to track each laptop from Quanta, to the shipping carrier, to the port, to FedEx.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
My XO developed a crack on the LCD after less than a day of normal use. I've been trying to get it replaced under warranty, but have yet to actually talk to a human. At this point, I would be happy to just go and buy the replacement LCD and put it in myself, but I've searched extensively and you just can't get spare parts for this thing....
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
That's because individuals want what they paid for.
When a few pallet loads go missing, containing units that don't belong to any specific person, that's just another bureaucratic "meh"?
I suspect you will see plenty available on eBay once the bulk shipments get going in earnest.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
So maybe the whole problem is that it's not for profit. Maybe non-profit is the way to go when you are coming up with a vision and getting donors.
But maybe you should ask PC manufacturers like Asus (manufacturer of the OLPC), people that, oh, I dunno, know a little something about logistics, cost management, customer service to put up bids when you actually want to get it done instead of running everything yourself.
Like what is the problem here. It seems that they had no idea or experience in doing logistics, order fulfillment, customer service. They can't pay professionals to do this? They are funded. They have to pay people to do this anyway. It's like the "not invented here" problem for the non-profit "industry".
I have three children, but I started with one laptop order because I'm not particularly wealthy and my youngest might be too young to benefit from the little lean green machine.
:)
:)
Anyhow, I'm one of the unfortunates that entered a P.O. Box in the delivery address on the paypal page on November 12th. Luckily, I did pay with American Express though. More on that later.
On 12/2, I called the OLPC folks to find out if I would be getting a confirmation number for the order, as the only response I'd received so far was an e-mail from paypal. At that time, a customer service rep was sharp enough to notice the P.O. Box and 'fix' the issue.
Then I called back on the 20th because I hadn't seen hide nor hair of that little green temptress, and they had to 'fix' the P.O. Box issue again. At that time, I was told a supervisor would call me back. I wasn't particularly happy that I would be missing out on the laptop for Christmas, but I did feel like customer service was doing what they could. Until the supervisor never called. And I started reading blogs from other folks mentioning the 'supervisor will call you back' line and the failure to actually get callbacks.
Finally, I tried to call both the G1G1 ordering line and the support line on the 8th and 9th of January but the line was continuously busy. On the G1G1 line, I got the message "All customer service reps are assisting other customers, please hang up and try again later". On the support line, I got "All circuits are busy". Great.
So on the 9th I sent an e-mail to the support line saying I'd give them until Friday to initiate a cancellation of my order, or I'd start a charge back process through my American Express. Man oh man am I glad I used a credit card. I feel sorry for all those chaps that paid using their paypal or checking accounts. So I did start the charge back on 1/11. And I'm glad I did, because American Express has a 60 day policy for initiating charge backs, so I barely came in under the wire!
To this date, I haven't received a reply to the cancellation request e-mail.
The kicker is I did get through to G1G1 on 1/18. I wanted to let them know the charge back process was ongoing and give them the option of canceling. The best part is the customer service person told me 'No supervisor is available, but I can have them call you back' when she misunderstood that I was 'going' to do a charge back. Once I explained that I had already initiated the process, and that I was calling to be polite because I thought it would be easier for them to refund the money than have to deal with amex, she put me through to a supervisor immediately. The same supervisor that wasn't available 1 minute previously
And of course, the supervisor promised to contact me Monday morning to let me know she'd started the refund process. And of course, she never did. It's like the cherry on the top that makes the dessert complete
The grand finale is that the refund came through yesterday! Yeah baby!
And now I'm shopping for XO competitors with that cold hard cash. And I think I'll keep my donations to local charities instead of pie in the sky groups for the immediate future.
p.s. - Before I forget, I did get the following on 1/18, the same day I spoke with the supervisor to cancel. So now I'm worried it'll show up on my doorstep and I'll have to keep working with OLPC to figure out the mess...
from OLPC Customer Care
to +laptop@gmail.com,
date Fri, Jan 18, 2008 at 11:26 PM
subject Your XO Laptop Is On Its Way
mailed-by bounce.resultsmail.com
Dear Donor,
We are contacting you to provide an update on your Give One Get One donation and the shipment of your laptop.
We are very sorry for the delay in the processing of your donation. This email confirms that your donation now has been successfully processed and has been sent to our warehouse for shipment.
Your XO laptop will ship next week and we will send
I'm a December 14th donor; while I'm a little disappointed that it hasn't reached me yet, I've no problem cutting OLPC quite a bit of slack, as what matters most is the "GIVE 1" part of the G1G1 program. There are plenty of articles showing that kids in less fortunate areas have started using them and they are a hit. Because OLPC is fulfilling that part of the promise, I will be patient and forgive them those delays, although I am somewhat less forgiving of the subcontractors (but not terribly so).
:)
I can wait a couple more weeks; the only thing that bugs me is that I can't play with it right now, as I've seen and handled an XO and it is so neat
De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum
I purchased mine by noon on the first day. Paypal charged my amex the same day. Still no laptop. I emailed 2 weeks ago, got a bounce that said they'd get back to me in 3-5 days, and nothing else. I called yesterday, and they said my paypal address was wrong, which they corrected online, and said I'd get an email with tracking info once thay have it.
It sounds like a programming error is messing up some addresses (I've bought at least 5 packages on ebay with the same paypal shipping address since November.) But the donation went through immediately.
I'm not mad, I expect to really enjoy the device, and am glad that some kid got one too. But is it that hard to dump out a list of names and make some "we know it's not there yet" emails? I'm not that surprised by the delay, but am by the failure to address this proactively, and hope that these are only growing pains.
I ordered two -- in the first hour of the first day of the promotion -- to be shipped to my house in the US. As of today, I have nothing. No laptops, no email, no nuthin.' I phoned and confirmed that my order number does exist and indeed I have been charged for both the laptops (in November) and $50 for shipping (the day after Christmas).
But it's not the lack of laptops that's turning me from an interested and cheerful donor, to mild annoyance when it didn't show up before Christmas, to contemplating reversing the charges. It's the lack of information. Sure, there are delays. Sure, there are priorities for getting big shipments out to major educational recipients. But I gave these folks $850, and I don't even get the courtesy of a *status* message?
According to the schedule, mine should have showed up a month ago -- at the absolute latest. Before Christmas. I made the mistake of telling my kids about it, thinking I would teach them something about partnerships and donations, etc etc, and that's my own fault. But *still* even after phone calls and tracing and corrections... when I check the laptopgiving.org page, it tells me the order number is invalid, and that my email address is not found.
The kicker is that I work for a UN agency that manages large refugee aid programs, and I had to borrow an OLPC from a friend to show it to the Education & IT department directors. They're very interested in the OLPC, as it fits some of the educational needs pretty nicely. What am I going to tell these guys when they ask whether the project is well-run, has decent governance, and can deliver?
Sheesh.
-Jon
I think not...(*poof*)
I placed a G1G1 order near the end of 2007, and the only confirmation I ever received was a PayPal payment confirmation. Can anyone tell me if I should have received some sort of confirmation email from the OLPC Foundation itself?
I consider my G1G1 order to mostly be a charitable contribution, so I'm fine if it takes them quite a while to ship my laptop. But I'd like to have some sort of confirmation from OLPC to let me know that they even realize I placed one. Did other folks receiving any other sort of confirmation before being told that their laptop was supposed to ship at X date? I've tried contacting the OLPC folks, but I have never been able to reach anyone.
All I want is for OLPC to survive and make a positive impact worldwide -- and that's why I participated in G1G1. But let me tell you, it's amateur hour as far as logistics go. They naively thought that because the laptop hardware was ready, everything else would magically fall into place, so they rushed all starry-eyed into shipping laptops before Christmas. As it turns out, their completely untested shipping and support infrastructure was inadequate given the load.
I've received a total of 3 different tracking numbers for my single laptop over the past 2 months. All 3 are invalid according to Fedex. I've called, verified that they have my correct address and been told my laptop was in the queue to ship a month ago. I was subsequently promised a delivery by the end of the year, then by January 15th, both of which have come and gone. Then they promised to reveal the shipping date by this Wednesday in an email sent on Monday. On Thursday they backed off of that claim, and said that hardware supply issues were at fault and assured me that I would receive another email at some point in the future with a shipping date. And so the saga continues...
Look, I'm cutting them a lot of slack because they're a non-profit trying to get off the ground and the primary goal here is to get laptops into the hands of needy children... but the problem is that they've been a model of evasive, unhelpful and secretive with regard to logistics problems from the start. If they had said, "hey we'll do our best to get you a laptop by March 2008" from the beginning, I think we all would have gone on with our lives, but for a not insignificant number of us, it's been one story after another -- all of which leads some of us to wonder whether the organization is hiding something with regard to our charitable donations.
Anyway, I fully comprehend that G1G1 logistics issues do not imply that they'll have problems fulfilling orders overseas. And in fact, the G1G1 program was for the most part an afterthought with regard to OLPC's primary mission. However, I think they've hurt themselves a great deal by not getting their act together with G1G1. Third-world purchase estimates have been cut by orders of magnitude since the heady days when Dr. Negroponte went around boasting that they wouldn't even talk to countries who weren't willing to buy a million laptops. The G1G1 program has become an instrumental tool in seeding laptop programs in places where reluctant national governments have backed off of early purchase promises. By pissing off G1G1 donors, they've essentially bit the hand that feeds them, and this will make it that much more difficult to realize Dr. Negroponte's original vision of one laptop per child.
I can wait a couple more weeks; the only thing that bugs me is that I can't play with it right now, as I've seen and handled an XO and it is so neat
Turns out OLPC had been sending me status updates about the delays and whatnot, I was just not seeing them.
You can't take the sky from me...
You can't take the sky from me...
The problem is that they lost a bunch of orders, especially first-day ones, I guess.
No doubt it had something to do with the amount of traffic they got.
They couldn't really send you a message if your order was lost. Hopefully, they'll recover it soon.
11/12/07 Ordered XO through the G1G1 program, paid via CC/Paypal.
11/14/07 Received two emails, one thanking me for my support, the second informing me that OLPC would attempt to deliver prior to the holidays.
01/04/08 Received email stating that my order has shipped and how to track the order. Followed links from laptopgiving to FedEx. Tracking information showed that my order was already "out for delivery". Wow! I thought, I'll have it in time for the G'kids visit. Then I noticed that the package was being delivered to Washougal, Washington and not Abingdon, Virginia where I live. I sent a note off to OLPC's support informing them that delivery was off by some 2,600 miles.
01/15/08 Received response to my support query:
Dear Donor,
I was able to track your order and I do show your package was delivered
bellow is the tracking information from FedEx:
Insert cut and paste from FedEx showing the package delivered.
01/16/08 Responded to OLPC's email of the 15th with comments that they had missed the point of the email. West Coast/East Coast -- not the same thing.
01/24/08 Received the following:
We are in receipt of your inquiry and will respond to you as soon as
possible. Please note due to overwhelming response, we may not be able to
immediately respond to your inquiry, however, you will be contacted. The
first mailing phase is scheduled to ship out just before the holidays, and I
assure you that this will be rectified before your laptop is shipped out.
I am now really interested in what the next email will bring. Maybe I'll be in line for version 2 or 3 of the XO.
"At some point we might do it in Europe," said Walter Bender, OLPC's president,
You can't take the sky from me...
I was a Day One donor, and I haven't received my laptop yet, though I *have* received two emails telling me that their delivery software is telling them they can't ship to my address. I used my work address, which is a confirmed PayPal address to which I've had literally dozens of online purchases shipped over the last three and a half years, so that makes no sense. If they say they had problems with PayPal data, I guess that sort of explains it. I wrote them after the first "we can't deliver it" email, authorizing them to send it to my home address, and never received a reply. Thet opened a 24/7 customer service phone number on Jan 22, and when I called them on the 23rd they promised me I can expect to receive my XO laptop at the work address within the next 10 days. My fingers are crossed...
Vista delayed by MS for years.
Nintendo running out of Wii stock.
Waiting list for Asuss EEE PC? At least one month.
Those corps, so organized and ready to make business.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I didn't contribute to G1G1 to buy a laptop. Getting an XO was the bonus. The reason I contributed was because it's a charity, it was x-mas and I was feeling charitable.
If the story was that OLPC lost all of their money backing a player in Texas Hold 'Em, I'd be pissed off. Instead, they're focusing on delivering laptops to the third-world and giving the gift laptop to the first world ran into some troubles.
Yep, I got several e-mails. First a few in December telling me I wouldn't get my laptop by x-mas. Then early in January saying it was coming Jan 15th. Then later saying it wasn't coming yet. No biggie. When I get it, it'll be a fun toy. But it gets here when it gets here.
In the mean time, OLPC should focus on the mission of getting computers to 3rd world kids -- that's what's important.
I just contacted OLPC for the "give many" option, since i'm looking for 120 laptops for the school that i run located in Latin America. I got a response from someone from brightstarcorp.com the same day indicating the price and asking for a shiping address so he could send me the official quote. So once i get the quote our school will be wiring 36'000 usd plus shipping... should i be worried?
OLPC is one of the greatest threats Microsoft and Intel have faced. They are doing all they can to spread FUD including setting up dummy accounts in forums and elsewhere to discredit OLPC. Sadly, they are now using Slashdot itself to eliminate OLPC.
I don't see what I would call "working class" kids in any of those photos that you claim shows them. What I see and is demonstrated by the photographs is the children of nomadic farmers attending school in uniforms. I don't know how you could even infer that they are "working class". Given the GDP of Mongolia and the per capita income along with the nomadic lifestyle I fail to see how you could even apply that term to any students from the nation in question even when applying racism and infering that because you see well cared for children that are clean with clean uniforms somehow implies they are "working class" (the meaning of the word implying they aren't poor).
Soviet Russia?
Still do.
Had I had the money to order, though, I would have done so in the recognition this was going to happen, and not caring.
I guess I was hoping most of the others who were ordering understood, from what we knew about costs and from the price, that there was a certain risk and were ordering in the same frame of mind that I would have been. That was perhaps naive on my part.
If I had the money, I'd donate enough money to cover hiring a logistics company to pull things out. (If I had that kind of money, I'd already be a backer, and I'd have arranged the logistics as soon as I heard they were considering the G1G1 program. But, having said that, I'm wondering if that kind of funding up front would not have potentially been picked at by iNTEL and Micro$oft as tantamount to dumping.)
But I'll say this, too. If I had the money, I'd be fishing: "Not willing to wait it out? Sell me your order." I'd refrain from the temptation to not offer full price, too. Not because I think I could resell them high, but because I want to leave naysayers as little room to say stupid things as possible.
Anyway, my advice to all who were able to get orders in, wait. Time waiting is a good way to support the project, too.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Red Cross should not be brought into this. They have enough overhead problems already.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
You claim that's clear profit, but they have made the obligation to deliver those XOs.
So, no, it is most definitely _not_ clear profit. Neither clear nor profit.
If you don't understand that, you also don't understand that, when you get your paycheck, the money out of it that you owe your landlord for the month you've been living in your apartment since you paid rent last is not really yours. You control it until you pay your rent, but it is by no means clear.
As for whether this constitutes backstabbing your strongest advocates, others have already dealt with it.
If you ordered (one+)one, you're a twice a fool if you don't just wait it out. If you didn't order one, you shouldn't be crudding up 'net with your instant accusations against people who are trying to do a lot of good but got bit by the scale of what they are doing. If everyone waited for absolute assurance nothing would go wrong before doing anything good, the only things that would get done would not be good.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Yeah. What a racist.
I did get my OLPC XO. I bought it the first day the you can order via the buy-one-get-one program. I received it some time back in late December. I showed it around the office, to some friends, and gave it a good shake down test. It was impressive and I thought was fairly well designed.
Then, I gave it away;
http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-January/009361.html
I would encourage others who have received XOs and don't know what to do with them to do similar. Find a developer or someone who can really use it, and then give it away. Otherwise, contribute to the cause by helping with educational programs, improving the code, or writing documentation. Porting Doom, writing a new MP3 player, or bitching about performance is not helping.
It is not a general-use laptop. It's an educational tool. I don't think most Slashdot readers understand that.
I placed an order for for an XO through the "Give One, Get One" program on December 31 and haven't received mine, yet. I have received a couple of status update emails, though, so I'm not that concerned. Hopefully I'll receive it soon. In the meantime, I've loaded up the newest XO OS image file in QEMU to try things out. Kinda interesting, but I'll probably try and load an alternate OS on the XO hardware.
that you can wait on hold for 3 hours and still not talk to anybody.
How do you convince somebody of something if you can't communicate with them???????
olpc for sale
This has nothing to do with Microsoft OR Intel. At home, I have used Linux since 99, and I haven't owned an Intel processor since the 386. Currently, I run Ubuntu on AMD boxes.
I ordered a laptop in December.
My credit card was billed December 17th.
I finally got curious, tried to track it. Get this message from the website: "We are working hard to ship all XO Laptops. If you are unable to track your laptop or have not received it, please contact OLPC Donor Services by calling 1-800-201-7144 for assistance"
I tried to call up. I was on hold for two hours, then had to leave.
I sent an email, explaining that I couldn't track it online or reach a human, and was curious when I could expect the laptop.
Received the following response:
Hello *******- Thank You for participating in our Give One Get One program.
I'm sorry that we did not keep our word and get the laptop to you by
January15th. We are working really hard to get that laptop out to you ASAP-
we're shipping laptops daily. Remember -you can track your order by going
to www.laptopgiving.org and clicking track your order- you then provide your
e-mail address as well as your reference number- you will then be provided
with a tracking number or a message. If you have any questions/concerns
call and speak to a representative 1(800) 201-7144. Thank You for your
patience.
OLPC
Donor Services
Now you can call this FUD all you want, but this a FACTUAL DESCRIPTION of MY interaction with the OLPC project. You only have so long to dispute a VISA transaction, so I want to make sure they have a record of my transaction on their end. I'm not getting that warm fuzzy, so after a couple of weeks, I will probably have to explain to my VISA card issuer to cancel the transaction due to non-delivery.
I could write off the whole thing as a donation, but that wasn't the deal, and nothing pisses me off more than someone unilaterally altering the deal, and I don't care whether the alteration is due to malice or incompetence. I donate a lot to charity. I will give someone the shirt off my back if they ask nicely, but if they try to take it away from me, I will probably kill them.