The idea sounded noble. For $400 total, buy an XO laptop for yourself and another for a child in a developing country. But the execution was a mess. Some customers waited months past the expected time for their little green machines to arrive.
Now, however, One Laptop Per Child has wisely farmed out the retail arrangements to Amazon, which can ship both inside and outside the United States. The main order page is here. As reported in PC World, "The devices will be shipped within 30-days in the U.S. or longer for people ordering from the U.K. or other parts of the world. "
I sold my XO some months ago because OLPC wasn’t paying sufficient attention in my opinion to e-reading software, and more importantly I wanted to raise cash to try other machines. But I still have fond memories of the crisp screen, which actually fared better in bright sunlight. I also liked the ability to use the XO as a tablet.
Yes, I’d welcome updates from XO boosters, including fresh information on the status of FBReader for the laptop.
Related: Relevant items from the independent OLPC News (try here and here if you’re not visiting OLPC News today).
I remain intrigued by the XO as an ebook-device, and yet, I worry about the (lack of) business sense in the way the organization has gone about developing, promoting, and distributing it. I can only hope that laptop.org gets a better, more sensible (dare I say ‘saner’?) CEO to run things.
So I’d like to maybe try out G1G1 this year, but at the same time I’d like to wait for reports to come in from the first-timers as to what the build quality is now.
How long will the offer be made?
I’ve heard early reports that this would run through the end of December. And yet on the laptop.org blog, it is said that ‘unlike last year, this is an ongoing effort.’ That means to me that it will be up there on Amazon for as long as the XO is made.
Anybody out there have any confirmation of this?