OLPC: Won't miss Intel's 'half-hearted' laptop effort
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Intel&#39;s resignation from the One Laptop Per Child Project&#39;s board of directors will have &quot;no impact&quot; on the group&#39;s operations, since the chip maker contributed little to the project since joining last year, OLPC President Walter Bender said in an interview.&quot;We never really got much going with Intel to have an impact,&quot; Bender said.Intel joined OLPC&#39;s board of directors&#160;in July as part of an agreement that seemed to bury the hatchet between OLPC and&#160;Intel&#39;s competing Classmate PC&#160;project. In addition to ending a war of words between Intel and OLPC, the two sides agreed to cooperate on technology development. Work also began on the development of a version of&#160;OLPC&#39;s XO laptop&#160;using an Intel processor instead of the AMD chip found in the current version.But the partnership agreement ultimately yielded little, and Intel made a &quot;seemingly half-hearted effort&quot; to build a version of the XO based on one of its microprocessors, Bender said.The development of&#160;an XO laptop based on an Intel processor&#160;was widely believed to rely on a version of Intel&#39;s upcoming Silverthorne processor, due out early this year. But the use of Silverthorne, billed by Intel as an inexpensive and power-efficient processor, was never confirmed by either Intel or OLPC, although Intel employees privately hinted at its use.Regardless of which chip was actually used in Intel&#39;s development efforts, the prototype laptop didn&#39;t live up to OLPC&#39;s expectations. &quot;They developed something that, as far as I know, is more expensive and more power-hungry than our current offering, so I&#39;m not quite sure what the point is,&quot; Bender said.Bender&#39;s comments underscore the mutual nature of Intel&#39;s decision to quit OLPC, but he also hinted at missed opportunities.&quot;My expectation was that there&#39;s lots of room for cooperation, particularly on software ... [but] I couldn&#39;t get Intel interested in helping me with any of those problems,&quot; Bender said, adding Intel executives seemed most interested in using the agreement with OLPC for marketing purposes and public relations.&quot;The only thing they were interested in was ... helping them make marketing statements about how Intel&#39;s approach to learning was different from OLPC&#39;s approach to learning,&quot; Bender said. &quot;They weren&#39;t interested in how we can learn together and make something better for kids.&quot;For Intel&#39;s part, a source familiar with the company&#39;s decision to resign from the OLPC board said repeated requests to abandon the Classmate PC in favor of support for the OLPC&#39;s XO played a major role. Intel has invested heavily in Classmate PC, which is currently being tested in several countries, and the company did not want to walk away from those efforts, the source said.During the six months that Intel belonged to OLPC, the chip maker contributed around $6 million to the project, the source said, estimating that Intel spent around $100 million on education-related projects last year.Bender declined to comment on Intel&#39;s financial contributions to the project.&#160;
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Not everyone is ready to do a complete switch over to the new Intel LGA 775 platform quite yet and perhaps for good reason. Should you decided you would like to say take a peek at it without having to &quot;Sell
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Microsoft and the OLPC are working on a laptop that would be capable of running Windows and Linux, but it's not a dual-boot system. Sort of.
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Intel Corp, the world's largest chipmaker, is on the verge of making its biggest push yet into mobile consumer electronics, seeking to replicate its success in mobile personal devices, as well as personal computers long before that.
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(InfoWorld) - Intel has been beating out a steady rhythm of big product announcements in recent months. And last week that beat went on: The company shipped Merom, the mobile entry in Intelâs 64-bit Core 2 Duo processor line. The announcement, following on the heels of the delivery in May of AMDâs dual-core Turion 64-bit notebook CPUs, shows Intel coming on hard and fast to regain some of the market share it has lost. Still, with so many products flowing out of the pipeline at the same time, Intel will have to be careful not to cannibalize its own efforts. Merom is a mobile entry in Intelâs 64-bit Core 2 Duo processor line, as well as Intelâs answer to the Turion CPUs. Intelâs new Core 2 Duo T7200, T7400, and T7600 notebook CPUs clock in at 2GHz, 2.16GHz, and 2.33GHz, respectively, with 4GB of shared cache and the same Intel 945 Express family chip sets as the 32-bit Core Solo and Core Duos that preceded them. Consumers will most likely see Merom sold as Centrino Duo, an adaptation of the long-running and megapopular Intel brand that bundles CPU, chip set, graphics, and wireless networking controller. And thatâs where the problem lies. Centrino has been a home run for Intel in the notebook space, but the decision to throw the Centrino brand onto yet another product line is bound to have consumers and salespeople scratching their heads as they try to grasp the differences between no fewer than three different âCentrinosâ on the market. For example, Core Duo has been a surprise hit among Intel notebook OEMs, perhaps because Apple has done so well with its Core Duo MacBook Pro line. That puts Intel in the position of having two dual-core notebook CPUs that use the same chip set, with very similar claims with regard to power efficiency and performance. That could leave consumers to choose between two flavors of Intel dual-core notebooks: Centrino Duo and Merom Centrino Duo. Centrino Duo, a 64-bit technology in a market where 32-bit software predominates, might slow adoption of the Merom Centrino Duo platform. Uptake may be even slower if Core Duo notebooks are less expensive than those built with Merom. So read those labels carefully!ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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A spin-off from OLPC, Pixel Qi, is looking to create a $75 laptop and trying to advance low-cost computers and power-efficient laptops.
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Mary Lou Jepsen stirred up a controversy when she left the struggling One Laptop Per Child nonprofit effort in December to start her own for-profit company, Pixel Qi, with the goal to create a $75 laptop using technologies she invented at OLPC.Jepsen&#39;s departure as CTO prompted critics to accuse her of taking advantage of OLPC&#39;s nonprofit inventions for personal gain, but supporters shot back, saying it was the right time for her to leave a listing ship. OLPC has been afflicted by production delays and rising costs over years, with the laptop&#39;s estimated price rising from $100 to $188. It is now beset by waning orders and competition from commercial vendors like Intel that threaten to sideline the nonprofit effort.Jepsen denied the allegations, saying her departure was put in place early last year and that she continues to work with OLPC on developing technologies for future XO laptops while selling it for a profit to commercial organizations.Technologies she invented at OLPC include the display system optimized for low-power operation, which has been implemented in the XO laptop.Retaining the OLPC spirit, Jepsen said Pixel Qi is developing inexpensive products like a power-efficient display that can be used in developing countries. She chatted with the IDG News Service about the new company, the $75 laptop, and her days at OLPC.IDGNS: How is Pixel Qi progressing?Jepsen: Things are going great. Pixel Qi is now a month old. I&#39;ve done a lot of startups before, but [Pixel Qi] is a very unusual startup. It&#39;s got products to ship already, so that&#39;s unusual. It&#39;s getting a lot of attention, which surprises me, but it is good that people are interested.IDGNS: Are you working on the $75 laptop right now?Jepsen: The $75 laptop -- maybe people are interested in it because it&#39;s a catch phrase -- but mostly it&#39;s about designing things for the billions of people who are joining the information age right now. That&#39;s what Pixel Qi strongly believes in.Right now I&#39;m starting this company ... to get a lot of the technologies in [OLPC&#39;s XO] laptop into other laptops and cell phones as a first priority. Then working with OLPC to focus on driving that next-generation laptop. But we just started shipping this generation [of XO laptops], we owe it to ourselves to see how the children use them ... and before we start in earnest the design and development cycle to have the feedback from children in different countries.I&#39;m focused on getting the screens and power management into other people&#39;s small laptops and cell phones right now. I think the [$75 laptop] will happen pretty soon, but again, I&#39;m not really focused on the $75 laptop right now, while the innovations that I&#39;m working on can go into that.That mimics what we did at OLPC. We thought a lot about [designing the XO laptop] before executing on it. It&#39;s a lot easier to redesign on paper. [We are] taking this time and really talking to a lot of who&#39;s who in technology about what [the $75 laptop] should be. But it&#39;s certainly possible to go lower price -- if you look, there are $10 CPUs around.IDGNS: There is a perception that you left OLPC to privatize the technology and make money out of it.Jepsen: I arranged it with Nicholas [Negroponte]. My departure has been well planned and organized with OLPC. It was in place since spring of 2007, and I was committed to delivering the XO into high-volume mass production. But as somebody who ... invents, develops, and gets hardware into mass production, there wasn&#39;t much more for me to do at OLPC after ... that.On some level, I was responsible for making a laptop ... and, I realized ... I should keep doing this. So I got access to the ... intellectual property and patents. Not because I was the inventor, and not even because the inventor has the really good chance of improving the price and performance of her invention, but because OLPC is the beneficiary as the licensee.I&#39;m still in spirit with OLPC, but now I&#39;m with Pixel Qi, and I am not working on just children, but adults and trying to get the cost down. That doesn&#39;t mean just Dell on a diet if you will, but [a laptop] that people are proud to own and proud to use at low cost and designed for different environments. The mass market -- there&#39;s literally billions of people who want to join this information age, and they need products too. They need interesting products, not stripped-down stuff. The XO is probably the first in that line.IDGNS: A $75 computer seems optimistic considering OLPC&#39;s inability to produce a $100 laptop. Can you walk us through the changes needed in component prices and system design to reach that target?Jepsen: I don&#39;t think it&#39;s that hard, frankly. If you look at the cost of flash and DRAM, they go down 50 percent year over year. You look at screens, they go down 30 percent every year. If you look at the cost of CPUs -- well, some of them stay expensive -- there are several companies working on the $10 CPU right now.There are pretty low-cost [parts], but using low power, guess what ... you don&#39;t use the same amount of ... processing power. Your battery is really inexpensive if you don&#39;t use a lot of power because it won&#39;t need as many cells, for example. I think it&#39;s very straightforward.There&#39;s ways to hit ...[the $75] envelope if you look at the mechanicals and the keyboards and everything else you need on the motherboard. I think we know how to ... integrate the components and work with manufacturers and producers to get there very quickly to lowering the price and increasing the performance. But then again, you have to redefine performance for a cow herder and pick your country.IDGNS: All of that still calls for performance. Is there going to be some kind of trade-off in capabilities relative to a mainstream notebook?Jepsen: There&#39;s two ways to be fast, one is the standard, more blah way, where you just heap on the megahertz and megahertz and then heap on the code. Vista&#39;s footprint is 12GB as opposed to our OS at OLPC, it&#39;s 0.1GB, it&#39;s 120 times smaller. You could do big code and big iron or skinny down the code and make do with a 500 megahertz processor ... that was a state-of-the-art laptop in 2000. All of the software has gotten bloated, and do you really need a little paper clip guy or doggy telling you what to do?The XO is ... an outdoor usable laptop. You can drop it, you can spill on it and the batteries last a long time. And it&#39;s green. Those are performance metrics that really matter. Making your batteries last a week is also a performance criteria. Intel has said for a number of years that it&#39;s not about&#160;one more megahertz anymore, it&#39;s about lowering the power consumption.IDGNS: Are inexpensive laptops a new category? IDC says notebook computers like Eee PC -- they don&#39;t take those laptops when they measure market share or measure unit shipments. They&#39;re calling the category &quot;notebook gadgets.&quot; How do you feel about that?Jepsen: It&#39;s funny. I don&#39;t feel much about the word. I just talked at a gadget conference, &quot;Greener Gadgets,&quot; but ... [Intel&#39;s] Craig Barrett, when he was trying to be derogatory toward the laptop project, called it a gadget. I think that we think of gadgets as things that don&#39;t really work for long, have a short life, and are transient, not real machines. The XO lasts two-and-a-half times longer than a standard laptop. That&#39;s not a gadget-like property of it. What is a gadget? Is it a learning machine or is your laptop a gadget or cell phone a gadget?IDGNS: Did Intel undermine the OLPC project with their Classmate PC?Jepsen: It&#39;s such a long story with them, especially for me because I used to work [at Intel]. It&#39;s hard for me to summarize. Certainly, there are so many individuals at that company on the technical side when we finally got working together, it was great. We were really pursuing an -- I think it&#39;s been announced -- Intel chip in the XO, that was something we were working well together on with their technical team. I think the difficulty was from the sales and marketing side as I understand it, and I really wasn&#39;t involved in that in OLPC. I would only hear from the ministers in the countries I would visit and from Nicholas and so forth. I wasn&#39;t that involved in it towards the end.IDGNS: Is there a release date for the $75 laptop?Jepsen: It&#39;s not that hard. It will take about two years. Realistically, it does need that time because what you have to do first is make the components and then you put them together. At OLPC, it took&#160;three years because we had to start with the disbelief, but now people believe. Now cut that down to about two years, it&#39;s about reasonable. It&#39;s 2010 we&#39;re looking at.
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Upcoming chips will lead to relatively inexpensive hardware, company says.
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Europeans interested in the One Laptop Per Child Project&#39;s XO laptop may soon have the chance through a &quot;give one, get one&quot; offer similar to that offered in North America last year.&quot;At some point we might do it in Europe,&quot; said Walter Bender, OLPC&#39;s president, in an interview Friday.Under the &quot;give one, get one&quot; program offered in Canada and the U.S., customers could buy an XO laptop for US$400 and a second XO laptop would be donated to a developing country. Each XO laptop currently costs around $188.OLPC hasn&#39;t yet made the offer available in Europe because the XO has not received the necessary certifications to be sold there. &quot;We haven&#39;t finished all that stuff, so we couldn&#39;t do it in Europe yet,&quot; Bender said.Whether or not OLPC does make the XO available in Europe remains to be determined, and such an offer remains under consideration. &quot;We may or may not do it,&quot; Bender saidFrom OLPC&#39;s perspective, the &quot;give one, get one&quot; offer helped large numbers of people in North America get involved with the group&#39;s efforts to bring computing to children in developing countries, Bender said.&quot;A lot of people [are] jumping in to the software, to learning and to support. ...That&#39;s what I was hoping Intel would do, but they didn&#39;t. The public is doing it instead,&quot; he said, referring to&#160;Intel&#39;s acrimonious departure&#160;last week from OLPC&#39;s board of directors.OLPC has so far shipped around 50,000 XO laptops to North American customers under the &quot;give one, get one&quot; program, and more remain to be shipped, Bender said. The number of customers who ordered laptops under the program was not immediately available, but as many as 150,000 units may have been donated through the program.&#160;
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Intel Corp, the world&#39;s largest  chipmaker, is on the verge of making its biggest push yet into  mobile consumer electronics, seeking to replicate its success  in mobile personal devices, as well as personal computers long  before that.
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Intel&#39;s Classmate PC isn&#39;t just for students anymore. HCL Infosystems plans to sell a version of the Classmate PC to consumers and businesses in India who want a rugged, low-cost laptop.Priced at 13,990 rupees ($356), HCL&#39;s MiLeap X laptop uses the same beefy case as the Classmate PC. But HCL -- which&#160;signed an agreement with Intel&#160;last year to produce the Classmate PC -- insists there is very little in common between the two computers.&quot;It is a totally different product,&quot; said George Paul, executive vice president at HCL Infosystems.The specifications of the MiLeap X suggest otherwise. Both computers have a 7-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) screen with 800-pixel by 480-pixel resolution, a 900MHz Celeron M processor, Wi-Fi, and 2GB of flash memory for storage instead of a hard drive. They also use the same chip set, Intel&#39;s 915GMS.The main difference between the MiLeap X and the Classmate PC appears to be a minor aesthetic change: The MiLeap X&#39;s vinyl cover more closely resembles a business folio than the blue covers typically found on the Classmate PC. The MiLeap X also comes with HCL&#39;s logo emblazoned below the display.Paul acknowledged the MiLeap X can be considered a &quot;derivative&quot; of the Classmate PC since both computers use similar technologies, but said significant differences exist between the two products. He did not specify what those differences are.Nor Badron, an Intel spokesman, confirmed the MiLeap X is based on the Classmate PC.The basic Classmate PC systems are supplied by Intel and manufacturers such as HCL configure the computers and install software to meet the needs of their customers, Badron said, adding that Intel was &quot;extremely supportive&quot; of HCL&#39;s plans to develop a Classmate PC version for consumers and business users.The MiLeap X gives HCL a start in the low-cost laptop segment, where most computer makers have yet to release products. &quot;It&#39;s a quick and easy way of getting into that market,&quot; said Bryan Ma, director of personal systems research at IDC Asia-Pacific.The MiLeap X, which runs a version of the Linux operating system, will go on sale in India on Jan. 26.Developed in response to the&#160;One Laptop Per Child Project&#39;s low-cost laptop efforts, Classmate PC was designed for schools in developing countries. The computers were not originally meant to be sold to the general public, largely over fears within Intel that the low-cost laptops would cut into the company&#39;s gross margin.Last year, Taiwan&#39;s Asustek was the first to crack open the door for wider Classmate PC sales with the&#160;introduction of its Eee PC, which uses many of the same components. Intel expected Asustek to announce a version of the Classmate PC for education customers, but the Taiwanese hardware maker instead declared the Eee PC, which uses the same processor and components as the Classmate PC, would be sold to consumers.Intel has since embraced low-cost laptops as a product segment, despite continued resistance from some executives inside the company. The company&#39;s focus on that market will intensify later this year with the release of Silverthorne, a low-cost, energy efficient processor that will appear in a number of low-cost laptops currently under development.(John Ribeiro, in Bangalore, contributed to this report.)&#160;
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Continuing its effort to provide an alternative to the One Laptop Per Child project, Intel announced plans on Tuesday to team up with Asustek to produce a notebook for developing countries that could cost as little as $200.
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Specially designed laptops required? Intel looks set to release a quad-core microprocessor for notebooks at long last, but you're not likely to get your hands on a laptop containing the chip for the best part of a year.â¦
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All-in-one machine at Intel confab bears resemblance to new Apple PC. Also: High-tech sandwich boards?
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OLPC is experimenting with bovine-generated electricity for its low-cost XO laptop...seriously.
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Company will break its promise to deliver a speedier chip, shifts focus to dual-core designs. Intel has confirmed its near-term plans for its desktop processors before it reaches the multicore era.
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Intel also unveiled a key optical design win with Emulex Corporation and a new compiler for storage applications. Intel introduced the 64 bit-capable Low Voltage IntelÂ® Xeonâ¢ Processor 2.8 GHz with 800