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1) What's worse than not seeing that green-icon-festooned XO laptop box on your front porch, yet? Seeing on that green-icon-festooned XO laptop box on your front porch that is empty. Ugh, it pains me to even blog about this. Bob writes on his blog about how when his wife got home on Friday she found a box addressed to him. Turns out (as you can see from one of his pictures to the left) that the XO and its power adapter were stolen from inside! How incredibly lame is that?? Someone couldn't just steal the whole box, they had to steal the XO and send the box on its merry way!! FUCKERS!!
Too bad we can't all have Ican Krstic deliver our XOs to us. Lucky Uruguayan kids!! ^_^
2) OK, so, this brings me to my frustration. While my XO hasn't been stolen, it also hasn't been shipped. I remember the night of November 11--around 11:30PM, I was thinking to myself about how I'd like to go to sleep around midnight for a change and how I actually had most of my work done. A half-second later, I remembered that the next day was November 12--when the Give 1 Get 1 program begins taking orders for the XO laptop (SWEET!). Orders were to go live at 6am ET, so I tossed out my plans for an early (for me) bed time and stayed up until 3AM PT and right at 3AM placed my order because the site had claimed that it would be first come, first served. In fact, one email I got from the OLPC people seemed to suggest that each XO laptop was being built as each order came in (no, manufacturing isn't that fast, obviously, but you know what I mean). However, after perusing the OLPCNews.com/forum last night I quickly discovered that people who ordered their XO over a week after I did have gotten their XOs already. Of course, I'm jealous and I'm also happy that they're getting theirs so early, but why the hell did I bother staying up until 3AM on the very first day to place an order? Why did they claim "first come, first served"? Why does the OLPC wiki say that the XOs will ship via UPS when they've shipped FedEx Ground? Why isn't anyone getting tracking numbers??
What's even worse is that these $400 machines (that's our effective cost) are being left on doorsteps signature-free, where any dickhead neighbor could just walk off with one. LOVELY.
I'm beginning to think that the whole delivery/distribution thing has been nicely botched by whoever is in charge of it. Between random people getting theirs first (so much for 1st come, 1st served), no tracking numbers being emailed and no signatures required upon delivery, to me, it's amazing more people aren't in poor Bob's situation. I just hope he gets his XO and no one else has to find themselves in his situation.
3) Now comes the guilt. OLPC is a non-profit that exists to help put educational laptops in the hands of underprivileged children around the world. I should be giving them a break for getting this far. So I feel guilty for mentioning any of this. Except that, well, how do they expect to change the 3rd World if they can't even deliver smoothly to the 1st World?
Orignal From: OLPCXOLPotD: XO STOLEN, DELIVERY CRITICISM, GUILTY FEELINGS
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