What a difference a year can make. Intel has gone from being a direct competitor and outspoken critic of Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child Initiative to a key ally in providing low-cost laptops to children living in the world's most remote and poorest countries.
As you may remember, Negroponte had some harsh words for Intel back in May. In a 60 Minutes interview, the MIT professor said that the company had been had been "shameless" in trying to kill off the project by creating a competitive laptop called the Intel Classmate. According to Negroponte, Intel had a bone to pick with the OLPC primarily because the project's $175 laptops housed AMD chips and not the company’s own.
Fast forward to early July, and Intel surprised nearly everyone when the company said it would actually be joining the non-profit organization's board and contributing technology and educational content to the initiative.
Now, according to an article in PC World, Intel may actually get its original wish, too. Discussions are currently under way to put an Intel microprocessor inside one version of the OLPC project's XO laptop. The first version, which after multiple delays is scheduled to start shipping in October, runs on AMD's 433MHz Geode LX-700, a slow but cheap and power efficient processor. No word yet on which processor Intel intends to use for the laptops. In the end, I guess Intel and Negroponte decided bickering over who might better save the world's poor children was hurting both sides.
