thelinuxlink.net

Hi all,

I want to warn others not to order any products from Koolu. After listening to one of your podcasts a while ago and as we are running out of power capacity in South Africa (don't ask - it a sad situation) I thought it would be a good idea to try the Koolu devices. So I tried to order two and so my trip to hell began.

First off they wanted me to have a paypal account and since I didn't have one, and don't want one, I canceled the order. A month later I got an email that the products had been shipped. I emailed them to tell them I hadn't paid and didn't have money right then so please don't ship but it was too late. A month later the good hadn't arrived but I decided to pay in good faith. I emailed them telling them the good hadn't arrived but I would like to pay. They sent me a link which required me to signup to paypal and I gave in and signed up.

They graciously took my money. A week later I inquired about the where abouts of the goods. They said they would get back to me and Canada post was following up. After numerous emails over 4 weeks this is what I get told:

"Canada Post is still doing an investigation as to where the shipment has gone.
Our policy is F.O.B. Toronto, which means that you are responsible for the
shipment once it leaves our offices."

I don't recall this in their terms and conditions and in addition no other internet site I know says its the customer problem if it doesn't arrive! So basically they took my money and its not there problem if they don't know where it is and from the legnth of time it takes to get a response form Canada Post they clearly don't care either.

I am super p*ssed.

Send an email to maddog about your issue..... There is also one other person to talk to but I forget his name.

I almost purchased one till they gave me the run around about the tllts discount. In a way it was a blessing. My brother bugged me into putting debian on my nslu2. Then there was no real need for the koolu anymore. If you look around, you can now buy a mini-itx boards and all the trimmings for less. Some of the embedded boards we looked at were way over priced. With distributions taking a more active role in supporting older hardware, why not re-purpose existing hardware. Some of the old celeron mbs were not that big anyway. Cyrix i think made some p3 class cpus that almost did not need a fan. A home built case and a mail ordered dc-dc atx ps you could probably come out a lot cheaper anyway. That is what we have done for our robotic projects.

With the cheapest eeePC selling at $299 shipped, it's hard to justify buying one of these ultra small pc's like the Koolu, Zonbu, Linutop, etc. The eeePC is almost as small + a built in screen and works off batteries. The arrival of the super cheap, super small notebooks will quickly kill off the need for these devices. That being said, I happen to have a free Koolu on it's way to me as I type this, and I'm certainly looking forward to playing with it. I plan to write up a review comparing it head to head with a Zonbu I already have. When and if I get an eeePC I'll add that to the comparison round up.