I heard that there was an even more evocative death behind the hand crank idea: Kofi Annan was demoing the prototype laptop with attached hand crank in public, and the crank broke apart from the laptop while he was turning it.

I worked at OLPC, and I thought this aspect ultimately ended up fine: we quickly moved to having a separate pullcord charger instead. The pullcord didn't put any stress on the laptop, and you generated power with actual large muscle groups along your body, rather than just rotating your wrist, so it was massively more efficient. But everyone kept mentioning the crank, for sure.