OLPC’s $100 laptop was going to change the world

You had to be the right kind of poor to be able to buy the OLPC. They were not very interested in selling domestically in the US (except for that buy 2 get 1 offer). Chromebooks and cellphones hit the price point now, and don't require an NGO.

Yep. I was helping the project as a volunteer, and the refusal to help America's poor really offended me. Americans were treated as a source of funding. I always got a sense that exotic cultures/languages/peoples/countries were adored, while plain old ordinary poor Americans were considered unworthy. You couldn't just buy an OLPC XO-1 at Walmart for $185, which was about what the devices actually cost. Instead it cost you $400. Parts suppliers hated this too; they gave good pricing because they were promised high volume.

OLPC also ticked off a huge crowd of free software people who had enthusiastically showed up to help. People were eager to support a machine that would never run Windows... until they were betrayed on that. Lots of people jumped ship over that, even though Microsoft didn't really follow through.

Add in a few technical mistakes, and that was that: the WiFi on an internal USB connection affecting power management, the dual-mode touchpad being hopelessly inaccurate, Python being absurdly inappropriate for the GUI of a low-end system, the 16-bit video depth causing terrible performance with all modern code, depending on mesh networking which was more of a failing research project than a viable protocol, some very experimental overlay filesystem stuff...

> They were not very interested in selling domestically in the US

They weren't interested in individual sales at all, but they would sell into the US the same as anywhere else: to public education bodies.

It was envisioned as a system-of-education project with technology as a key enabler, not a consumer technology project.

> Chromebooks and cellphones hit the price point now, and don't require an NGO.

The point of the NGO wasn't the price point, though keeping g the price down was one important requirement.

> to public education bodies.

Yeah, not so much. I never could get a response out of them for a tribal college with plenty of students and a young children's program. They really had their preferred people and just wouldn't talk to anyone else.

Specifically, their stated policy for most of the time they were actively making deals was that it was exclusively for national ministries of education, for use in primary and secondary education, and even after they adopted more flexibility, that was still the main focus.

Sorry for being a small tribe, but if that was their stated goal then I guess it had no real use for me or mine. It would be nice if some folks would take into account their own backyard.

Your mention of the poor touchpad accuracy really brought the frustration back to me. That may have been the single biggest issue that drove me to stop using mine. It's a shame, the XO had so much potential, but the problems you mention doomed it. Much like the Aptera electric car around the same time (off topic, but that was a similarly bold product that ultimately failed by a death of 1000 bad design decisions despite a lot of good ones).