Intel, `$100 Laptop' Project Make Peace

After an initial lashing at Intel for coming out with its Classmate PCs, OLPC proponent Negroponte appears to have make peace with the company, as reported in an AP story dated Jul 13, 4:34 PM EDT and posted at Wired -

As Nicholas Negroponte stormed the developing world trying to drum up buyers for the innovative $175 computers designed by his One Laptop Per Child education nonprofit, he encountered a persistent obstacle: competition from Intel.

Intel's chair Craig Barrett had derided Negroponte's machines as mere gadgets. And Intel was signing up international governments for its own little "Classmate" PCs, which follow more conventional computing designs than OLPC's radical "XO" computers.

Negroponte was suspicious of Intel's motives, since the XO runs on processors from Intel's fiercest rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Negroponte said Intel had hurt his mission and "should be ashamed of itself."

But in recent weeks, Negroponte and Intel CEO Paul Otellini began peace talks and on Friday, the two sides annnounced Intel will join OLPC's board and contribute money and technical expertise to the project.

Intel will continue to sell the Classmate, which has fallen in price to the low $200s, attracting buyers in Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico and Nigeria. OLPC still hopes its machines reach schools in several countries this fall. But now, Intel and OLPC might seek ways to package their computers together. OLPC also expects help from Intel in their efforts to perfect the XO machines - and get their cost closer to the originally stated goal of $100.

The initial wave of XO computers will still use processors from AMD which has been a major partner, along with such other big names as Google Inc., News Corp. and Red Hat Inc. But without a doubt, Intel would love to oust AMD as the processor supplier. After all, that is Intel's core business - not selling little computers.

Several countries have expressed interest in the $175 XOs, but OLPC has backed away from predicting which governments will be first to officially sign contracts to buy the machines. The project needs orders for 3 million laptops before its low-cost supply chain kicks into action.

One possible selling point for the Classmate is that it can run a version of Microsoft Windows in addition to the open-source Linux. XOs use a homegrown, open-source setup uses a new approach designed to be intuitive to children.

Microsoft has been working to get Windows to run on XOs. But it still doesn't appear that will be ready soon. The main reason is that it is hard to tweak Windows so it can interact with the nonstandard XOs.