Laptops of DOOM!

Man’s greed never fails to astound me. Reports out of Henrico County, Virginia are starting to come in about the first round of iBook sales. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, here’s a little history.

Henrico is a southern county in the state of Virginia. The biggest city in the county is Richmond, and they were one of the first to try a pilot program of leasing laptops from Apple for many of the students attending their public schools. Each recipient got a 500MHz G3 iBook that came equipped with an Airport card, 256 mb of RAM, and a 10 Gb hard drive. From what I have been able to gather, the program was a moderate success, although they are getting Windows laptops for round two. The exact terms of the deal I’m not sure about, but the county had the option of purchasing each laptop for $1 at the end of the lease. They chose to do just that and then resell the first one thousand of them for $50. The announcement was made and people went nuts.

There were reports of people coming from as far away as California to buy up as many as they could to resell them again on eBay or some other auction site. Even Russ Walkowich and I were planning a trip down to Richmond to buy one. The hype was building to a fever pitch and school officials hearing about the demand made two decisions to try and bring it under control. The first was to move the site from a school warehouse to the Richmond raceway where parking was easier to manage and more room was available to accommodate the number of people that were bound to show up. The second change which killed the road trip for Russ and I was that only Henrico County people with proof of residence could purchase one at the first offering. While this meant I wasn’t going to able to buy a cheap Mac laptop, I understood the reasoning behind it. Henrico county taxpayers paid for the program, therefore they should have first crack. No biggie. At this point I put it out of mind.

Now reports are coming in about events that transpired at the actual sale. Apparently at the stroke of whenever the gates opened, a mad rush ensued. Several people were trampled in the melee, including the elderly and in at least one instance a child’s stroller that the mother quickly pulled her child out of was crushed as well. I hesitate to blame Henrico County employees for this near-disaster, but other safeguards should have been made to prevent this. Just opening the gates to all comers was almost a guarantee of a mob scene. Some kind of lottery would have prevented those except for whose numbers came up from rushing in to be first. Letting just small groups in with a Police presence to prevent the rowdier ones from gaining access would have helped as well. The extremely low sales price should be changed as well. If people are forming what amounts to crazed mobs for $50 laptops, increase the price to$100. More money for the schools and you might decrease the frenzy a little bit. While Henrico County officials probably could not have anticipated a near mob scene for what amounts to 4-5 year old laptops, I hope the next round of sales will be held with more thought into the safety of those attending.