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Intel's Child Laptop Drama

Gary Krakow

On Thursday, Intel(INTC) announced it was resigning its seat on One Laptop Per Child's board of directors. Not much drama there. But the reason why it's doing so is very interesting.

One Laptop Per Child's XO laptop runs on a microprocessor made by Intel's rival Advanced Micro Devices(AMD). Because of that, Intel developed a rival mini-laptop for school children called the Classmate PC.

Last year, OLPC and Intel agreed to stop bad-mouthing each other's computers and join forces to further the development of low-cost laptops. At that point, Intel got a seat on OLPC's board. Everything was good. Both sides started talking about an Intel-based version of the OLPC. And OLPC was reportedly also talking to Marvell(MRVL) about an ARM processor version of the mini-laptop.

But the relationship quickly went downhill from there. According to published reports, OLPC's founder and guru, Nicholas Negroponte, began saying that Intel had to stop making the Classmate PC, while Intel was saying it wasn't prepared to kill the project. At one point, Negroponte accused Intel of dumping its Classmate PCs to keep OLPCs out of reach of children across the globe.

Officially, Intel confirms its exit from the One Laptop Per Child program. It has said that the OLPC board asked it to end support to all non-OLPC platforms and to instead focus exclusively on OLPC.

OLPC President Walter Bender says there was a complete breakdown in his company's relationship with Intel because of a complete lack of cooperation.

OLPC's "Give One, Get One" program ended in December. Now, for a $200 donation, OLPC will deliver an XO computer to a needy child.