XO Giving/Europe

• Will people in Europe also be able to purchase XOs via the G1G1 program?

not at the moment.

As far as I know, not. This has more to do with logistics, support and other bureaucratic reasons that apply to international commerce of electronic equipment and not an arbitrary decision that forgot or ignored the rest of the world. --Xavi 20:44, 10 October 2007 (EDT)

Can you be more specific?:

Logistics solution: add logistic cost to price, What is the bureaucratic reasons? What UE law not allow it? (Xan)

For example, in Europe one can't sell a laptop without a take-back program in place. (some sort of recycling/disposal thing) AlbertCahalan 01:49, 13 November 2007 (EST)

If it's really not an "arbitrary decision that forgot the rest of the world", then why does the site http://xogiving.org/faq.php say nothing about this policy? The page clearly assumes that only people from the USA will read it (it doesn't even mention Canada). If it's really not just OLPC forgetting that the outside world exists, why is there no official clarification on the official site?

There's more discussion of this issue on Talk:Give 1 Get 1 (no clear answers or clarifications, mind)

The OLPC is a highly ambitious project in technical, pedagogical, and financing terms. The trade-offs involved mean that the paid staff are few and spread very thin. Consider the issues of shipping an EU version: people would expect a localized keyboard, OS, and basic warranty and support (not the "how do I get this program to do that" variety, but the "It doesn't turn on" variety). Then there's shipping. Yes, these problems are all solvable, but they take more than just money, they take staff, and OLPC just doesn't have any to spare right now. For those are ready to handle some logistics yourselves, there are some clear suggestions at OLPC news (unaffiliated news site).

Separately, I do think that some mistakes are being made here. A simple non-US FAQ like this one on the main website is a bad oversight. Also, it is important to make it very clear that this is not a tested, consumer-ready product - although a solid v1.0 is not too far off, the software is still very much in development, and this will still be true at Christmas.

Localization keyboard is not a problem: you give a laptop in non-US countries, like Chile, African regions, .... so you have localized keyboard.

For the other hand, in EU people "expect" the same as in US: if you say that we have only 30 days warranty, we understand it as americans do ;-)