Big Delays, Small Laptops: OLPC XO Recipients Mad 165
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."
No, I still don't have my XO... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Focus on what they do best? (Score:5, Informative)
Please see the draft flowchart, if you like:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/How_laptop_delivery_works [laptop.org]
go to the source (Score:2, Informative)
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/How_laptop_delivery_breaks [laptop.org]
Re:Money transferred but no accountability? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:It *is* simpler (Score:3, Informative)
Tue, but UPS manages to do it effectively. So does Fedex.
By the way, UPS moves approximately 10,000,000 parcels per day, not 80,000. Fedex does around 7,000,000 per day. What's needed is professional logistics management, and that may end up costing more than this product will support.
Re:Why am I not surprised? (Score:4, Informative)
Where I'm from the government was providing all of the services, and some of the services you are listing — Internet, Mobile Phones — simply did not exist. To get a regular phone line, one had to wait in queue for years.
Yes, and whoever disagrees with me is a moron.
Yes, there's a chance... (Score:3, Informative)
"At some point we might do it in Europe [pcworld.com]," said Walter Bender, OLPC's president,