There's a sucker born every minute - Phineas T. Barnum
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Chipzilla denies being mean to OLPC
MAKER of computer brains, Chipzilla has denied furiously that it ever undermined the One Laptop Per Child Project.
The accusation came from OLPC supremo Nicholas Negroponte yesterday after the partnership between the pair soured.
Negroponte claimed that Intel sales teams were running around trying to run down the OLPC so that third world governments would by its Classmate PC instead.
He cited cases in Uruguay, Peru, Brazil and Nigeria, and even Mongolia which he described as being 'small and remote'.
But Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said that it had never broken any agreement with OLPC.
True, there was a bit of tension in Nigeria, he said, but would not tell ZDNET what the tension was.
Negroponte added that Intel was slow to bring up any resources to the project. Chipzilla said it did its best in the short space of time.
Mulloy claimed Intel made substantial progress in the areas of firmware and hardware and there was a prototype XO based on Intel architecture that we were prepared to show at CES. This was apparently thrown in the dustbin on the way the show.
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Tags: Intel
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All this trashing of Intel over pulling out of OLPC is both ironic and silly. The OLPC owes its existence to Moore's law, and the tremendous rate of price-performance improvement provided by competitive capitalism. The idea that a non-profit, by not taking a few points off the top to pay shareholders, is going to have an impact in a world where capability per dollar doubles every year or two is laughable. Negroponte made a cool device, but it was built from the ecosystem created by Intel and companies like them. He's like a rooster claiming credit for the dawn; the only thing "visionary" is that he saw where Moore's law was going, and proposed the $100 device a couple years before the market will offer it as a routine matter. Negroponte isn't making it happen any faster, and Intel's pulling out to promote a different idea won't slow it down. The Intel vs. OLPC controversy is a tempest in a teacup; the exponential growth in price-performance is the real story, and it's bigger than both of them.
Is the Asus EEE laptop using Intel cpu meant for OLPC?

I have Asus EEE laptop, 900Mhz CPU, 512MB RAM, 4GB hard drive, 7 inch colour screen. It doesn't have solar power charger though ;-)

Couldn't Intel use this CPU as the basis for the OLPC, and maybe even the ASUS mainboard and just reduce the other hardware reqs to get the price down?

Maybe Asus are paying more for the 900MHz cpu then Negroponte wanted to so Intel are going with Asus instead?
That's why I don't buy Intel. I was looking at a review of Wolfdale yesterday and thinking...yea they did a good job, low power consumption and all that. Still, Intel is a friend of Microsoft and togheter they are the nastiest companies possible(well, maybe texaco is worst). It is interesting to see how their business tactics are similar, like it's only one company. Remember how M$ tried to screw Mandriva? For this move Intel, you sealed your image.