News Intel leaves OLPC board

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/01/05/intel_leaves_olpc_board/1

In a semi-surprising move, Intel has stepped down from the OLPC board after only six months and has decided to focus on Classmate instead.

 

hmmm, one the one hand they can make money, on the other they dont.
I wonder why they chose to leave...

 

From the looks of the Wikipedia article, they didn't really have much of an involvement given the majority of the hardware being supplied by AMD (and Marvell-provided WLAN) so I'm not too worried about them dropping out. The main issue will have been the funding they provided to the project, if it was anything other than just the 'Intel' as an official supporter (I'm sure it carries a fair weight globally.)

I'd imagine the real reason was that they didn't want to give any support to a project fundamentally-based upon AMD hardware. Shame really, considering the project's goals.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7171201.stm

 

To be honest I am not sure that the OLPC project is really all that worthwhile anyway. I am not quite sure how giving loads of kids laptops is going to miraculously increase their education or help bring their countries out of the "third world". Perhaps we would be best of addressing some of the other issues that they face such as food, clean water and shelter before giving them all laptops.

 

I don't think this is designed as a replacement for all of those things. This is more of a next step to development.

It's no secret that general use of a computer will increase ones aptitude in a century of advancing technology.