Yes, totally agree here. Obviously was far from my experience (In my house there've been for years now more computers than people, and that's not even counting cellphones). But I couldn't agree more with what you are saying: For an incredible lot of kids was not only the first contact with a computer; it was also completelly unrestricted.
Regarding incompetence, I think there was some sort of desconnection from reality from a lot of people in key places: I think way too many people thought that just dropping the netbooks would be enough (Like in Ethipia) without even considering cultural and social constraints.
It still baffles me that it is heralded as a success by a lot of people from the previous government; yet, I think that the move by the current government to scrap it completely - instead on making the effort of fixing the problems - was utterly stupid. There was a lot of energy, effort and knowledge by a lot of incredible hard working and knowledgeable people put into making them work.
Also, I never gave them much of a cursory look, but I think the machines were _really_ configured to be a powerful assistant to education: It's demise in the end was mostly due to - failed - politics... Just like with socialism ;)