Intel, OLPC affordable laptop bout only hurts users

Anyone with the remotest interest in ICT development will have noticed the battle raging at the "bottom of the pyramid," where competing initiatives have been vying for the hearts, minds, and dollars of schoolchildren and education ministries the developing world over. This particular battle is being largely fought by Intel and One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), once partners but now sparring in opposite corners after months of wrangling led to an acrimonious split earlier this year.

Both companies believe that portable computing is the answer to addressing the digital divide and are willing to go as far as building low-cost laptops by the millions to prove it. OLPC first publicly announced its intentions in January 2005, when Nicholas Negroponte showed a simple, non-functioning mock-up of his XO device (also known as the $100 laptop) at The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Intel presented a working version of its Eduwise laptop (also known as the Classmate) at the World Congress on Information Technology in Texas a year and a half later. A few months earlier, Kofi Annan famously broke the charging handle of the first iteration of OLPC during a press conference at the World Symposium on the Information Society in Tunis, Tunisia. It wasn't until the end of 2006 that the first OLPC laptops (albeit in beta and with a redesigned Kofi-proof charging handle) began rolling off the production lines.

High-profile initiatives such as these were unlikely to live in harmony for long, and sparks finally began to fly in May 2007, when Negroponte accused Intel of telling tales and frustrating and undermining the OLPC's work. Both sides traded words for two months until, in an amazing turnaround, they announced that they were to join forces in July. Intel became the latest arrival on the OLPC board, sitting alongside eleven other OLPC partners, a move that signaled both sides were willing to put their differences behind them and work together. Significantly, however, Intel continued work on its own laptop until OLPC -- according to Intel -- decided several months later that there was too much of a conflict of interest and demanded it drop the Classmate. For a project with the personal backing of the Intel chairman, this was never going to happen. It didn't.

There's no reason why the two initiatives couldn't have lived together, but -- as is often the case -- a mixture of economics, politics, competition, opinions, ego, and jealously led us to where we are today. For some, OLPC doesn't stand a realistic chance against one of the industry's biggest hitters, while for others, their earlier decision not to offer a commercial version of the XO hurt them badly, as did their failure to hit their publicized $100 price tag. To add insult to injury, one of the hottest topics among the XO community right now is whether a Windows XP-driven XO would be a good idea. For a computing device built proudly on open standards, this is a pretty fundamental question.