OLPC's XO Sub-Notebooks Face Keyboard Issues

Nicholas Negroponte's educational project is reportedly facing another bump in the road to delivering its tiny, green toy-like notebook. According to a forum post on the project's support board, some of the already released units are experiencing stuck key issues that render notebooks useless.

Some of the keycaps get stuck in the "activated" position either after they have been directly pressed, or by contact with a nearby key. Despite the fact that the OLPC is already aware of such behaviors, it can't take any measures because the keyboard components are produced by a couple of manufacturers.

"There are several manufacturers of the keyboards and we need the units to help us work with them and isolate if its a single manufacturer or common problem across units, " wrote Richard A. Smith, one of the project's support specialists in the forum post.

The first issues related to keyboards have been spotted earlier this year, but they were treated as isolated occurrences. However, since more and more customers have started complaining about keyboard malfunctions, the OLPC staff issued a note asking users to RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) the affected units.

However, since most of the units are shipped in remote third-world countries, returning products is not a solution. Moreover, the OLPC Foundation is still shipping defective units in Peru, as part of the largest XO deployment in South-America. Moreover, the rugged notebooks are shipped with critical hardware bugs to people who have never had any contact with computers, which would make self-servicing impossible.

Give One-Get One program donors will not be able to fix their own units for free, as the 30-day manufacturer's warranty has already expired. The OLPC organization might have deployed its hardware before thoroughly testing it. What's more important is the fact that the hardware flaw has been spotted after a massive deployment, and the OLPC customers aren't likely to come back anytime soon.