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."

Comments

Guys, guys, OLPC are a charity!

[Rogerborg]

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.

[Some OLPC hippy] says that the OLPC made a decision that getting laptops to developing nations was more important that[sic] delivering them to consumers.

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.

Re:It *is* simpler

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, go with UPS. The $100 laptop which now costs $200, is actually going to cost $300 once you account for shipping costs.