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A generally private-but-the-taxpayer-pays-expenses company in
Uruguay, Conex, is said to have charged the Electoral Court US$ 2
million for software that was used in the recent primary elections
in Uruguay.<br>
<br>
Central to this was the use of XO laptops, locally knows as
"Ceibalitas"<br>
<br>
Now, in the middle of a pass-the-buck media war, the XO's filled-up
memory and in some circumstances slow response are blamed for some
issues during the counting of votes and the data transmission to
Montevideo.<br>
<br>
Conex insists those problems had an easy solution that
insufficiently trained users did not follow.<br>
<br>
Connectivity problems, lack of extension cords also occurred, among
other.<br>
<br>
My opinion is that this was a valiant attempt to use the XOs for
Real Life needs. <br>
<br>
Also, I would like to see Conex upstreaming some of what they
charged (I have no knowledge of any upstreaming that has happened by
Uruguay in many years, and over a million XOs, except in a
courageous and devoted individual basis) for the "free" operating
system and software that they got - though I agree that the current
browser is very heavy, and slow responses and bad connections are
obvious results. <br>
Maybe if they had developed a lighter browser - maybe even a text
based one. <br>
Since an efficient system or UX has seldom been a priority in
XO/Sugar software development (looks and ideology preempt UX), it is
possible they never thought of such an option. <br>
<br>
Too bad, since originally the Ceibalitas were to be "it" for the
National Elections in October. THAT would have been a great thing,
IMHO.<br>
<br>
<br>
Link to article (Spanish)<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.elpais.com.uy/informacion/organismos-se-culpan-demoras-eleccion.html">http://www.elpais.com.uy/informacion/organismos-se-culpan-demoras-eleccion.html</a><br>
<br>
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