Intel relents, joins OLPC drive

Intel Corporation has declared that it would support the OLPC non-profit foundation’s project to provide computers for poor children around the world, making a volte-face in its long-standing opposition to the proposal.

The world’s biggest chipmaker has changed its stand from dismissing the laptop produced by the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative as a mere “gadget” to joining the board of directors of the non-profit organisation.

The OLPC scheme was founded by Professor Nicholas Negroponte, former chief of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, with the aim of producing low-cost, robust laptops for over 2 billion children in the developing world.

The One Laptop per Child Foundation developed the XO laptop, a personal computer, that it plans to put into production in September 2007 and sell for $176.

Intel markets the Classmate PC, a computer that competes with the foundation’s XO laptop. The two parties said they would be able to incorporate each other’s technologies, and would also consider a collaboration to develop a laptop.

Craig Barrett, president of Intel Corporation, had said at a press conference two years ago, “Mr Negroponte has called it a $100 laptop; I think a more realistic title should be the $100 gadget.”

Negroponte had accused Intel of trying to undermine the project in a series of media interviews, including a recent appearance on the CBS news magazine Sixty Minutes.

Intel was originally working on its own version of a children’s laptop. Industry commentators had speculated that the company was wary of the OLPC scheme because of the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) providing the processing power.

Though Intel was reluctant to join the OLPC scheme in the beginning, the company invests over US$100 million in education annually across 50 countries worldwide.

Walter Bender,a senior official with the OLPC, said News Corp’s MySpace division may develop a special Web community for the school children who get the laptops. It would be separate from the company’s current offering, which bans children of elementary school age.

News Corp is on the foundation’s board. Other supporters include AMD, which makes the microprocessor that runs the XO laptop, and Web search company Google, which provides e-mail accounts and free back-up services.

Software maker Red Hat, which developed computer programs for the device using the Linux operating system, is also on the board.

Microsoft, which is not on the board, is trying to develop a version of Windows that will work on the XO laptop.

A top official of Microsoft, the world’s number one software maker, said the company had yet to succeed in getting the operating system to run on the XO.