Intel should be ashamed: Negroponte

The much-talked about 'One Laptop Per Child' project (OLPC) has sparked off yet another controversy. A big one actually! Nicholas Negroponte, founder and leader of the OLPC project and professor at MIT, has said in a TV interview that he would have notched up three million orders for the $100 laptop (now revised to $175), but for Intel's "shameless" business practices.

Negroponte bitterly accused the microprocessor major of selling its own cut-price laptop -- the Classmate PC – well below cost to drive him out of market. "Intel has hurt the mission enormously," Negroponte said.

Both Intel and Negroponte's not-for-profit organisation, OLPC, have developed a low-cost laptop aimed specifically at school children in the developing countries. Intel's Classmate PC runs Microsoft Windows and Linux, besides Open Office. There are several other differences in both the hardware and software. (Stay tuned in as we plan to bring more on this topic in the coming weeks!)

Negroponte believes that the main problem is that his machine uses a processor designed by Intel's arch rival AMD. "Intel and AMD fight viciously," he said. "We're just sort of caught in the middle."

Negroponte says Intel has distributed marketing literature to governments with titles such as "the shortcomings of the ‘One Laptop per Child’ approach," which outline the supposedly stronger points of the Classmate.

Negroponte's project is currently in a critical phase. Countries have time until this month-end to place their orders for the first batch and will be able to purchase in the lots of 250,000.

The laptops will initially cost $176, but the eventual aim is to sell the machine to government-run educational institutions in developing countries at its originally promised price tag of $100.

Speaking to US broadcaster CBS, Intel's chairman Craig Barrett denied the claims. "We're not trying to drive him out of business," said Craig Barrett. "We're trying to bring capability to young people."

Barrett has previously dismissed the $100 laptop as a mere "gadget." Meanwhile, Intel is very aggressively pushing its Classmate PC worldwide.