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The main challenge for the OLPC team was meant to be finding enough orders for their developing-nation laptops, but ructions between them and their hardware partners may be an even bigger struggle. Intel, who have both sat on the OLPC board and were possibly set to provide the processor for the PC, have resigned their position and withdrawn all technical and financial support after OLPC asked them to cease promoting rival low-cost laptops.
“OLPC had asked Intel to end our support for non-OLPC platforms, including the Classmate PC, and to focus on the OLPC platform exclusively. At the end of the day, we decided we couldn’t accommodate that request” Chuck Molly, Intel Spokesman
Intel’s own Classmate PC had earlier come under attack from OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte, who had accused the chip maker of selling their device at a loss so as to steal customers away from his own version. Despite the fact that the XO-1 uses an AMD chip, Intel have denied that this affected their involvement in the project.
OLPC are yet to comment, and the long-term implications of Intel’s withdrawn support are as yet unclear.
BBC News [via Smart Mobs]
One mistake in your article is that Intel was OLPC’s hardware supplier. They were only hoping to be OLPC’s hardware supplier. OLPC actually has used a processor from AMD, Intel’s biggest rival, since the beginning. It was expected that Intel had entered the OLPC project to eventually become either a replacement for AMD or a co-supplier, but it had not yet produced a single chip for OLPC.
Thanks for the clarification, Yousuf, I’ve updated the article accordingly.
I kinda like the looks of it, how much was it going for?
Negroponte is dumb. If he thinks it’s his divine mission to help bring technology to poor children, then he should go about it the right way. Don’t blame Intel if you can’t compete in the market place because your laptop is 2x overpriced from your original $100 mark. Intel also donated $6 million and was going to donate another 6 next week and is helping on technology; this guy should seriously learn to be grateful. He’s a bad narcissist who doesn’t recognize where the power is. He should’ve kept on negotiating and not pissed on one of his most useful partners; I can just imagine Negroponte with his self righteous act yelling at the representatives of Intel to stop selling their Classmate PCs immediately. To think MIT graduated such a narcissistic self righteous fool. I would feel ashamed to have this guy leading any project.
me: that’s your opinion. Negroponte is not dumb just because he does not give a crap about corporate greed…If intel can’t control their money making machine in this project, they should be out….I have yet to see intel creating a project like this one..sure the linux pc $100 was a difficult target to meet but I always heard that you need to keep your expectations high if you want to achieve something… I seriously believe that Intel “donated” money to get something back….Me: don’t forget that in US more than everywhere else, money talks.
12 million is nothing to Intel compared with the momentum that a a few computers with AMD running a Linux desktop can achieve.
And here in spite of Microsoft’s and Intel’s best but Johnny-come-lately efforts to derail the project with competing products as they wake up to the problems the OLPC addresses.