OLPC fires back at Intel, children learn nothing
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Nothing warms the soul more than watching two organizations try to claim moral high ground while belittling goals and methods of their rival, all in the name of children.
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Blog: One Laptop per Child (OLPC) announces final beta version for its $100 XO laptop.
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Intel Corp  said on Thursday  it will drop out of the One Laptop Per Child project and resign  from the board after the project's board demanded the chipmaker  stop supporting other efforts in emerging markets.
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Intel has pulled out of the One Laptop Per Child initiative to sell millions of low-cost laptops to developing nations. The chip giant cited disagreements with OLPC's founder, former MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, according to a report published in the Wall Street Journal.
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The One Laptop Per Child project suffered a blow this week, with Chief Technology Officer Mary Lou Jepsen quitting the nonprofit to start a for-profit company to commercialize technology she invented with OLPC.Jepsen, who joined OLPC as its first employee in 2005 after Nicholas Negroponte started the effort, will pursue an opportunity to chase after &quot;her next miracle in display technology,&quot; OLPC said in an e-mail sent on Sunday.Jepsen was responsible for hardware and display development for the rugged and power-saving&#160;XO laptop, designed for use by children in developing countries. Though the laptop has struggled to find buyers, it has been praised for its innovative hardware features and environmentally friendly design.Her last day with the organization is Dec. 31, though she will continue consulting with OLPC, according to the e-mail. Dec. 31 is also the end of OLPC&#39;s Give One Get One program, in which two XO laptops can be purchased for about $400, with a user getting one laptop and the other being donated.Satisfied that XO laptops were shipping in volume, Jepsen noted in an e-mail that she was starting a for-profit company to commercialize some of the technologies she invented at OLPC.&quot;I will continue to give OLPC product at cost, while providing commercial entities products they would like at a profit,&quot; Jepsen wrote in an e-mail.&quot;I believe that the work I led in the design of the XO laptop is just the first step in changing computing,&quot; she wrote.Powered by solar power, foot pedal or pull-string, the laptop doesn&#39;t rely on an electrical outlet to run, making it useful for situations where power is unreliable or unavailable. The laptop&#39;s specially designed lithium-ferro phosphate battery consumes between 2 watts to 8 watts depending on usage, compared to 40 watts on commercial laptops depending on usage.The laptop&#39;s battery lasts up to 21 hours because of custom-designed, efficient power-saving features implemented at the hardware and software level. Batteries in commercial laptops may explode at high temperatures, while XO&#39;s batteries can run and recharge in temperatures around 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), Jepsen said in earlier interview.OLPC is also designing a cow-powered generator that works by hooking cattle up to a system of belts and pulleys.For connectivity, the laptop has mesh-networking features for Internet access.
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Intel Corp.  said on Friday it  will support a Massachusetts Institute of Technology  researcher&#39;s project to put computers in the hands of poor  children around the world, reversing its long-standing  opposition to the proposal.
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Intel resigned from the&#160;One Laptop Per Child Project&#39;s board of directors&#160;after refusing a request to abandon its Classmate PC program, according to a source familiar with the situation.Intel&#39;s departure from OLPC&#39;s board means that an effort to build a version of the project&#39;s XO laptop based on an Intel processor is over, the source said.Intel&#39;s Classmate PC is a low-cost laptop designed for students in developing countries and competes against OLPC&#39;s XO laptop, which is based on a microprocessor from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Intel and OLPC agreed in July to work together on the development of technology for low-cost laptops and to stop disparaging each other&#39;s laptop offerings.As part of that agreement, Intel got a seat on OLPC&#39;s board of directors and the two sides began to discuss building a version of the XO based on an Intel processor. At the same time, OLPC also explored the possibility of using an Arm processor from Marvell in yet another version of the XO.But during discussions in the months following the July deal, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte insisted that Intel abandon the Classmate PC effort in favor of throwing its support behind OLPC&#39;s XO device, the source said. But the Classmate PC is undergoing tests in several countries and Intel was not prepared to walk away from those efforts, according to the source.Intel spokesman Nick Jacobs confirmed that the company and OLPC had parted ways, but declined to comment further on the matter. Negroponte and other OLPC executives could not immediately be reached for comment.OLPC has struggled to win orders for the XO laptop. A rising price tag -- now close to US$200, instead of $100 as originally planned -- hasn&#39;t helped the group make inroads with cash-strapped governments in developing countries.
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The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) plans to launch OLPC America in 2008 to distribute the low-cost laptop computers originally aimed at developing nations to needy students in the United States.The group, which was formed in the U.S. by teachers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), came under criticism shortly after forming because its original mission did not include the U.S.Originally, the aim of OLPC was to develop a $100 laptop for kids in poor nations to ensure they don&#39;t miss out on the benefits of computing, and to make sure developing countries don&#39;t fall further and further behind modern nations due to their inability to buy computers, a conundrum commonly referred to as the digital divide.OLPC America already has a director and a chairman, and will likely be based in Washington D.C., said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC, in an interview.&quot;The whole thing is merging right now. It will be state-centric. We&#39;re trying to do it through the 50 state governments,&quot; he said.The decision to launch OLPC America came about due to three considerations.&quot;For one thing, we are doing something patriotic, if you will, after all we are and there are poor children in America. The second thing we&#39;re doing is building a critical mass. The numbers are going to go up, people will make more software, it will steer a larger development community,&quot; Negroponte said.The third reason is educational, so that children in the U.S. communicate with kids in developing nations and expand their horizons.The reason OLPC had not included the U.S. in its low-cost laptop program was because of the huge difference in need, Negroponte said. In the U.S., people spend $10,000 per year per child in primary education, but in Bangladesh, a developing country, they spend $20. It&#39;s a huge difference, and many people in the U.S. can afford more expensive laptop PCs for their kids anyway.But although the U.S. was not the focus of OLPC in the beginning, it has always been in the plans.&quot;To have the United Sates be the only country that&#39;s not in the OLPC agenda would be kind of ridiculous,&quot; Negroponte said.
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Intel has dropped out of the One Laptop Per Child initiative, and OLPC's CEO says that he's disappointed in the chipmaker's contributions.
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InfoWorld - Intel Corp. wants to see its low-cost Classmate PC help transform they way students in developing countries are educated. And the company is not alone. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project also hopes its low-cost XO laptop can close the &quot;digital divide&quot; that exists between the developed world and emerging markets.
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In an unexpected development, chip giant Intel Corp. has joined the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. The nonprofit project aims to equip children in developing countries with specially designed low-cost notebooks powered by chips from Intel&#39;s rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD).
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Monday blues? Chip giant Intel will today file its response to formal anti-competitive charges levelled by the European Commission.â¦
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The One Laptop Per Child Project would welcome Intel back if the chip maker returned to the group, the head of OLPC said Tuesday.The statement came just days after&#160;Intel quit the group&#39;s board of directors&#160;over what it said was OLPC&#39;s insistence that it abandon a rival low-cost laptop developed by Intel, the Classmate PC. OLPC has said it asked no such thing of Intel, and that it welcomes the Classmate PC because the more low-cost laptops there are available, the more likely they&#39;ll get into the hands of children in the developing world.&quot;It was very unfortunate what happened with Intel and I hope there&#39;s a way of rebuilding it in the future because there&#39;s&#160;no interest in OLPC pushing Intel out. It just is not in our interest. Our goal is to get this to as many children as possible,&quot; said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC, in an interview.He called it unfortunate that Intel made statements that OLPC asked the chip maker to stop working on the Classmate PC. &quot;The picture that painted was one of OLPC being anti-competition, which is ridiculous. We&#39;d like to see as many laptops out there as possible and kids have the widest choice possible,&quot; he said.Intel would be willing to talk with OLPC, said Agnes Kwan, an Intel manager. But she added that the organizational break-up came about because of differences that the groups have been so far unable to resolve.The OLPC Project started as an attempt to build a $100 laptop aimed at kids in poor nations, but the laptop from the group, the XO, will likely end up costing nearly double that amount, initially. The organizers of the effort, led by academics and researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), hope heavy volume sales of the laptops will drive down costs.The goal of OLPC is to make sure nobody misses out on the benefits of computing. The fear is that the price of a PC is keeping too many people in developing countries from learning how the software, Internet and communications benefits of computing can improve their economies, job prospects and lives, or that poor countries will fall further and further behind the modern world due to their inability to access computers, a conundrum commonly referred to as the digital divide.&#160;
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By Therese Poletti, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Mar. 6--Intel said it may not be able to provide all the electronic documents that rival Advanced Micro Devices is requesting in an antitrust lawsuit because of human error.   In a letter Monday to U.S.
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By Tony Glover, The Business, London  Dec. 7--American chipmaker Intel is using British schoolchildren and  students in secret trials of a prototype laptop. The company hopes this will  help conquer the world's education IT market.
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In a rare admission, an Intel executive says the Itanium chip family still isn't living up to
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A few months after it began hacking its Windows XP operating system to run on the One Laptop Per Child XO children's machine, Microsoft says it is actively field testing the software on the tiny laptops. Whether or not Windows is the best fit for the OLPC's core audience -- children in developing countries -- is debatable.