<quote who="Rev Simon Rumble"> > This one time, at band camp, Simon Males wrote: > > > This is the only time we're making the XO laptop available to the public > > and quantities are limited, > > I have to say, this really does seem like a boneheaded idea. Surely it's > in their interest to have loads of geeks buying these machines. > > First it gets the volumes up, which brings the prices down and makes the > whole thing viable -- hell, they can even (as they are now) put a > substantial markup on it. Second it creates a community of people hacking > on it, scratching itches and generally helping out. Sure, they might not > all have an educational focus, but so what?
The answer to this is really simple: Retail *SUCKS*. They're sucking up a considerable cost (in time and dollar terms) to provide the G1G1 programme, because it massively increases their workload to deal with "annoying customers", they have to deal with shipping costs (and people whining about how it's not available outside North America), etc. Per-machine, it's way cheaper handling these kinds of issues when you're selling XOs in packs of 250,000+... and with this kind of project, you need to build for scale at every level, or you're chasing your own tail. The most important thing to remember about the G1G1 programme: Unless you're going to hack on the thing, it's almost entirely pointless to buy one. If you have three kids, by all means, buy three. Otherwise, it's not worth your time: The XO is made for kids, and made for collaboration. A single XO is a curiosity, looking for a friend. (This is why Pia and I take both our OLPCs around to demo -- most people, even if they've seen the XO, have never seen the software truly in action.) - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 Jeff: Whatchootalkin'boutwillis? Pia: What's Willis? -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
