Rich Burridge's Blog : Weblog

« Previous day (Jan 28, 2008) | Main | Next day (Jan 30, 2008) »

Tuesday January 29, 2008

Disappointed In The OLPC So Far

This is going to sound like one of those Amazon reviewers that gives a product a one star rating because they haven't received their order yet.

At the end of last year, we went to the One Laptop Per Child Give One Get One! site and ordered an XO for Duncan (and presumably some child in a third world country would get another one given to them). At the time we placed the order, we were told that we would be getting it in January.

Last week, as their Track your order web site was a tad vague in its message, I phoned up the number given, and waited 45 minutes on hold, to speak to somebody. She assured me that she had just put my order on high priority. I asked her when she thought it might ship and she said she had just overheard her supervisor saying that there should be a shipment within a week.

I thanked her and hung up. Now, a week later, I went to check the status again. I see that it now says:

Your donation is ready to be shipped and is in our shipping queue. Unfortunately, we are awaiting new laptop inventory to fulfill your donation. We expect additional inventory to reach our warehouse from the last week in February through the end of March, and we intend to ship all remaining laptops to donors at that time. We will keep you posted as shipments are scheduled, and will send you an email when your laptop ships, with your tracking number.

I see that the phone number is gone from the web site too. This is very disappointing. It's hard to tell a nine year old child that they will have to wait at least another month.

I suppose it could have been worst. I could have been one of those people that ordered an Amazon Kindle just before Christmas and found that the product was:

Temporarily out of stock. Order now and we'll deliver when available.

I see that over a month later it's still the same.

Thanks for reading this far. Venting is cathartic.

[Technorati Tag: OLPC]

[Technorati Tag: Amazon]

( Jan 29 2008, 04:37:16 PM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [9]

Project Blackbox Officially Shipping

Every now and then, a product comes along that impresses the heck out of me. Project Blackbox (or the Sun Modular Datacenter S20 to give it its not-quite-so-memorable official name) is such an example. Looking back, I see it was October 2006 when we pre-announced it. Now, fifteen months later, it's an official product.