Earlier this morning Wayan mentioned that G1G1 was going global, if you can provide them with a shipping address within the US or Canada that is.
Additionally this morning OLPC issued a press-release that says that Give 1, Get 1 has been extended until December, 31st!
Now everyone can have one!
One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit organization dedicated to providing every child in the world access to new channels of learning, sharing and self-expression, is extending its recently launched Give One Get One program beyond the initial two-week limited time offer through December 31, 2007, in the USA and Canada.But that press-release also contained another piece of very interesting information:The extended period gives people more time to participate in this unique giving program and support the mission of One Laptop per Child.
To date, donations to the Give One Get One program have averaged US$2 million per day.Breaking down that figure reveals that about 5000 donations were made per day, which translates into 5000 "given" machines and 5000 "gotten" machines for a total of ~100.000 X0s purchased so far in the past 10 days. If you extrapolate those number until the end of the year we could see up to around 500.000 X0 sales just via G1G1.
While that is certainly an outstanding achievement I'm not quite sure how Quanta (with mass production apparently having started at 15,000 machines / month) will be able to keep up with that demand. Now it will be very interesting to see how long it takes before the first X0s hit the ground!
Update: The Give Many program has also received an update! While previously donors were only able to designate where 60% (Give 100+) or 80% (1000+) of the of laptops would be sent, with OLPC sending the remaining laptops to a country of their designation, the policy now says:
In each case, the donor designates where the laptops are sent.While the last version of the "Give Many" policy that I had seen (Google cached) indicated that the price was $200 per laptop regardless of quantity we're now back to the previous scheme of Give 100+ @ $299, Give 1000+ @ $249 and Give 10,000+ @ $199 per laptop. (Thanks to Bert Freudenberg to pointing this fact out to me!)
This is definitely a very exciting day for everyone following the OLPC project and my head is still spinning from all the information - talk about a developing story! What do you make of it? Let us know by posting a comment below...
Too good to be true:)
Quanta should have no trouble whatsoever in increasing production well beyond 15,000 per month. Just show them the money.
Of course, that is assuming that parts like the Jepsen display will be available as rapidly. I have no doubt that Mary Lou has designed the display to be inexpensively manufactured, so I will assume that this will not be the limiting item.
Lee, I absolutely agree that Quanta will have no trouble ramping up way beyond 15K units per month. (After all the initial planned called for millions of units to be produced per year.)
But to me the crucial question is just *how quickly they're able to ramp up the mass-production?* In other words, how long will the current purchasers (especially Uruguay and Peru but obviously also all the G1G1 buyers) have to wait before they receive their orders...
Any sightings of actual XO computers being shipped to G1G1 buyers?
anyone from europe with reliable information about the additional shipping costs? estimates go from $38 to $280 for forwarding to germany.
This was in my inbox this morning:
Thank you for contacting the One Laptop Per Child Donor Services Center.
We are in receipt of your email. Due to the public's overwhelming response
to the Give One Get One program, there may be a delay in the handling of
your inquiry. If you made your Give One Get One donation prior to November
13th, you are scheduled to receive your laptops prior to the end of December
with every effort being made to deliver laptops prior to December 24th. If
you made your Give One Get One donation after November 13th, you will
receive your laptops on a first come, first served basis with every effort
being made to ship all laptops by the end of December. Please also note we
are still processing donations and there may be a delay in you receiving
your receipt.
Please expect to hear back from us within 3-5 business days.
Thank you again for contacting One Laptop Per Child!
Sincerely,
OLPC Donor Services
the give many then didn´t change that much, if you pay 30000 for 100 laptops and then OLPC uses the extra 10000 to buy to buy 50 laptops you end up giving 30% of what you buy.
I actually prefer the other way around.
All this OLPC news had my head spinning too. Spinning so much I was almost late to my important appointment at the Cobb County Courthouse this morning: http://www.bbwindow.com/2007/america/legally_we_are_married.html
Congrats to you and your bride, Wayan! Alas, I had trouble accessing the URL. - David
http://www.bellybuttonwindow.com/2007/america/legally_we_are_married.html
If they claim that donations reached USD 2 mln per day, this would translate into 10'000 get and 10'000 given (donated) XOs, since only USD 200.- of the purchase price are donations ...
Keep in mind, there are people out there who are donating to this project without participating in the G1G1 program. I wonder what they'll use the donations for anyway? My guess is they'll bring the price down for particularly poor third world countries, but they haven't been entirely clear on this point.
Murphy: Thanks for posting the response you received from OLPC. I received one confirm on the day I ordered (the 12th) and then received a second confirm email last Friday, but neither included any sort of shipping info (when they're going out, tracking #, ETA, &c.).
So, judging by the email you posted, I should be part of the first batch to arrive by the end of December.
I didn't order mine until the 14th. I charged it to Amex and got the paypal receipt but have received nothing from OLPC. Should I be worried?
I was the first order my telesales person had at 3am PST when I ordered, so I was literally one of the first to order.
the e-mail was in response to me inquiring what i can do with my order #, their response seems to be a queued auto-response.
so I too should be one of the first to get my XO!
I was also one of the first to call. They finally charged my credit card for the order ($399 no extra charge for postage). Still no e-mail confirmation yet.
Friends, it is not about us as individuals. The Laptops sent out to these students in remote areas must be bullet proof. I have been to some fairly remote places, none like these places though. If a school gets lets say 50 units, you know there will be out of box failures of some percentage, hopefully low. After a year or so kids will damage their 'puters, leave them out in the rain or to get run over by their Dad as he leaves for work (don't laugh, its happened). I like the idea of training smart mechanically teenagers to rework the OLPC units after a couple of years or so and troubleshoot and repair the OBF units. (There will be some, you can bet on it.)
I ordered my XO and will patiently await its arrival, hopefully with good quality control. I will play with it a while, letting some little kids analyze it and then hopefully some of you brilliant people will have a site up that will show me how to re-configure it into a linux limited use machine with wireless e-mail and a book reader program.
I really wish this project great success.
Still waiting for ours to arrive. We ordered it November 14 and it was billed on our Visa on November 20. We paid $40 shipping that was billed after the fact in January. The website tracking says to call them. When we finally get a human they tell us that our laptop order isn't in their system due to an overwhelming response. I don't understand how they could have extended the offering period without being able to accommodate the early purchasers.
To put salt on the wound, customer service said it was because we live in Canada. (We live 15 minutes from the border). Then in my university cafeteria this week, I saw a woman with an xo laptop. She said she received hers a month ago!!!
It was the one Christmas present we were getting for our "one child"...she's still without a laptop. I know it's a charity and I really do hope the project succeeds, but I can't help feel really disappointed. We had great hopes of being a part of this community and helping to develop great learning tools since we have our own 8 year old beta tester.
UPDATE: It has arrived and we love it!