[IAEP] [UKids] Amzn Fire Sale No More: pricing rises 86% !

[Sora Edwards-Thro]

Price has gone up to $49.99
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TSUGXKE?keywords=kindle%20fire&qid=1448889890&ref_=sr_1_1&s=digital-text&sr=1-1>
for
Prime members, as far as I can tell. That's a 43% increase over the Black
Friday $34.99 deal, not 86% or double.

The Black Friday sale ended, yeah. And they're not discounting those
particular tablets for Cyber Monday, which is silly. And because everyone
got them on Black Friday, they're not going to be in stock until December
25th. This seems like standard holiday logistics stuff to me, not something
inherently terrible.

More troubling, the 6-pack (buy 5, get one free) deal is no longer a thing.
Actually, you're limited to 2 tablets at a time. They direct you to their
Education and Business solutions page if you'd like to order more / get a
bulk discount.

For those interested in the XO Infinity, the Indiegogo
<https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/infinity-a-computer-that-s-never-obsolete>
just launched. The retail price will be $300; backers get a special
discount ($250). . There's also an option to donate one; it's $250.
Finally, $2,390 gets you 10, giving a cost of $240 per unit plus shipping.

Being generous and saying that shipping only costs $10, each Infinity is 5x
the $49.99 undiscounted price of an Amazon tablet. So, if you're looking
for a cheap device to do basic tasks, unless we're expecting the Infinity
to last 15 years and still be relevant 15 years later, tablets are the
better option. I don't think the Infinity team is trying to replace cheap
tablets with their device. They're trying to do something new and exciting,
and that's admirable. But let's not pretend it's cost-effective.

If your goal is environmental sustainability and local ownership, it makes
sense to pay more upfront for a tablet that's produced in-country. Lower
shipping, support local industry, might be easier for staff on the ground
to repair and replace. Wee're definitely monitoring manufacturers in Haiti,
especially now that Amazon tablet price and the price of their tablets is
essentially equal (previously, with the 6-pack deal, we were only paying
$42 per unit...$8 discounts add up over 25 units).

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 8:01 AM, Adam Holt <holt at laptop.org> wrote:

> Amazon assures us they are not in fact a casino, with oscillating prices,
> oscillating inventory, and oscillating policies, and 86'ing inventory from
> a country whose code is +86 = China ;-)
>
> Perhaps worse from microdeployments' very practical and pragmatic
> perspective, looking out over the high walls of Fortress America, Amzn's
> tablets just don't exist in many countries, so that "local capacity
> building" CAN become more than a fundraising buzzword One Day.
>
> But yes: fyi Amazon has now almost doubled its tablet price range/target:
> "$64.99 without special offers", instead of $34.99-for-everyone so very
> recently.
>
> Braddock's cautions (about deployments having the logistics rug pulled out
> from under them) apply earlier than we imagined...
>
> Oh for the good old days when OLPC'S microdeployment pricing only
> oscillated about 10-to-20% of the XO's "China price" (perhaps that's still
> the case, if OLPC still uses DHL from China).  OLPC's microdeployment
> real/actual pricing (including country-by-country certication, delivery
> from China, customs brokering) being even more stable in the USA, last I
> checked anyway.
>
> The future of student devices / clean browsers / consistent Sugar UX
> remains all too blurry for now ~ might OLPC Australia's "Infinite" hardware
> (modular laptop, announced for September 2016) possibly reconsider a clean
> Sugar experience out-of-the-box?
>
> --
> Unsung Heroes of OLPC, interviewed live @ http://unleashkids.org !
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