Experience with One Laptop Per Child

I joined the buy one-donate one program of One Laptop Per Child on November 12. It took more than a month for my machine to arrive. I didn't open it until yesterday. It didn't work. Turning it on, there was a little green light that showed it was on, and nothing else.

The instruction manual that comes with the machine is useless if the machine does not work. It does have information on a link to the Internet, which does have information. How a kid with a computer that doesn't work is expected to access the internet manual is not clear to me.

I tried calling, and got a fairly useless message. I sent an email to the help desk, and got a suggestion a few hours later that I reboot the machine, which I did for the nth time, and got the same nothing. The message suggested that I call the help desk, or send another email asking for help.

I called the help desk and this time, after waiting for about ten minutes, got an operator who asked me for my confirmation number, which I never could find. She however, did find my information using my name and address. She then told me that someone would email me or call me shortly.

More information later.