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They wouldn't sell to poor Americans and relied on NGOs. If you were an organization in the US with lots of children that were low income, they wouldn't return

They wouldn't sell to poor Americans and relied on NGOs. If you were an organization in the US with lots of children that were low income, they wouldn't return your calls. The Give 1 Get 1 was not a help to those audiences. I just wish they had given a damn about the forgotten in the US.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> They wouldn't sell to poor Americans and relied on NGOs They wouldn't sell to individuals generally (“poor Americans” weren't specially excluded), because their entire model (and the basis of their pricing) was direct bulk sales (or construction licenses) to public education entities (principally, national ministries of education), for use within public education curricula.
- protomyth 5y ago
  Well, they wouldn't return the phone calls of at least one public education entity. I'm still a tad bit peeved at them and Google's Chromebook offer. At least Chromebooks were obtainable later on.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Well, they wouldn't return the phone calls of at least one public education entity. Initially, they overtly were exclusively dealing with national ministries of education; later they became more flexible and had some discussions with lower-level US entities, including some deployments.
- justin66 5y ago
  They didn’t just reject selling to individuals, they rejected selling in large quantities to corporations, organizations or governments operating outside their educational mission. I recall thinking they’d never achieve real economies of scale in their production and therefore hit their $100 price point after witnessing a speech in which Negroponte responded to a question and acted as if selling the hardware to somebody like UPS or the USPS was the most ridiculous idea ever.
- morganya 5y ago
  They initially targeted governments in the Global South and excluded North America, Europe, and other high-income countries (see http://www.olpcnews.com/use_cases/education/childrens_machine_xo_usa_school.html http://www.olpcnews.com/use_cases/education/childrens_machin... for a summary of their thinking early on). This did shift over time, though.
morganya 5y ago
Even NGOs were initially blown off - Negroponte initially said they'd only sell lots of no less than one million to governments directly. But when they didn't get any firm takers in the first couple of years of the project, they started loosening those requirements, which is how Paraguay Educa even got their foot in the door (with a project that initially only had 4000 laptops, later increased to around 10,000). There was a rather badly-managed OLPC project in Birmingham, Alabama. I have a paper co-written with Mark Warschauer and Shelia Cotten on it - once my website is back up it'll be available here: https://morganya.org/research/Ames_OLPC_Birmingham.pdf https://morganya.org/research/Ames_OLPC_Birmingham.pdf

dragonwriter 5y ago

> They wouldn't sell to poor Americans and relied on NGOs They wouldn't sell to individuals generally (“poor Americans” weren't specially excluded), because their entire model (and the basis of their pricing) was direct bulk sales (or construction licenses) to public education entities (principally, national ministries of education), for use within public education curricula.

protomyth 5y ago
Well, they wouldn't return the phone calls of at least one public education entity. I'm still a tad bit peeved at them and Google's Chromebook offer. At least Chromebooks were obtainable later on.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Well, they wouldn't return the phone calls of at least one public education entity. Initially, they overtly were exclusively dealing with national ministries of education; later they became more flexible and had some discussions with lower-level US entities, including some deployments.
justin66 5y ago
They didn’t just reject selling to individuals, they rejected selling in large quantities to corporations, organizations or governments operating outside their educational mission. I recall thinking they’d never achieve real economies of scale in their production and therefore hit their $100 price point after witnessing a speech in which Negroponte responded to a question and acted as if selling the hardware to somebody like UPS or the USPS was the most ridiculous idea ever.
morganya 5y ago
They initially targeted governments in the Global South and excluded North America, Europe, and other high-income countries (see http://www.olpcnews.com/use_cases/education/childrens_machine_xo_usa_school.html http://www.olpcnews.com/use_cases/education/childrens_machin... for a summary of their thinking early on). This did shift over time, though.

morganya 5y ago

Even NGOs were initially blown off - Negroponte initially said they'd only sell lots of no less than one million to governments directly. But when they didn't get any firm takers in the first couple of years of the project, they started loosening those requirements, which is how Paraguay Educa even got their foot in the door (with a project that initially only had 4000 laptops, later increased to around 10,000). There was a rather badly-managed OLPC project in Birmingham, Alabama. I have a paper co-written with Mark Warschauer and Shelia Cotten on it - once my website is back up it'll be available here: https://morganya.org/research/Ames_OLPC_Birmingham.pdf https://morganya.org/research/Ames_OLPC_Birmingham.pdf