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Rory Cellan-Jones

Intel says bye to One Laptop

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 4 Jan 08, 09:42 GMT

Sitting in Gatwick airport waiting for a flight to Las Vegas, news comes through that Intel has dropped out of the One Laptop Per Child Project.

To me and Jonathan Fildes, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ technology correspondent who has followed this more closely than just about any other reporter, this does not come as a great surprise.

We travelled to Nigeria in November to report on OLPC’s pilot project at a school there. We were impressed by the enthusiasm of the children using the laptops and the commitment of the teachers but were concerned that a lack of technical and financial support might stop the whole project from taking off. The children were showing remarkable ingenuity in mending broken laptops – but the bill for the internet connection was about to land on the head teacher’s desk and it wasn’t clear how it would be paid.

By contrast, across town, Intel was pouring large sums into a pilot of its rival Classmate project in a school which had been virtually rebuilt around the computers. The company insisted that it was collaborating with OLPC and had no desire to crowd it out of the new market for cheap computing in the developing world.

But Intel’s arrival as a participant in the charity project came very late, and after criticism that it was acting to frustrate the aims of OLPC. Now Intel has dropped out after OLPC reportedly demanded that it ended its involvement in the Classmate PC. Intel was never going to drop a project which had the personal backing of Craig Barret, Intel’s chairman, who’d visited the shiny new Nigerian school a few days before we filmed there.

OLPC was always going to face an uphill battle when confronted with a mighty corporation like Intel. Now it has suffered another crushing blow to its efforts to put what was supposed to be the $100 laptop in the hands of millions of children. Only last week chief designer Mary Lou Jepsen stepped down from the project.

We’ll be talking to the OLPC’s founder Nicholas Negroponte and to Intel’s Paul Otellini in Las Vegas.


Darren Waters

Xbox Live goes limp

  • Darren Waters
  • 4 Jan 08, 05:36 GMT

Don't disappoint your customers - it is a lesson that Microsoft is learning the hard way with Xbox.

Xbox Live, Microsoft's online gaming and community service, is often touted by the firm as the jewel in the Xbox crown and as the key distinguishing feature between its console and Sony's PlayStation 3.

It is - largely - a paid for service and is such an integral part of the Xbox experience that many users take it for granted.

But over the Christmas period the service partially collapsed for many users - with patchy performance and glitches.

Microsoft has held its hands up to a and is offering every Xbox Live user a free download of a game.

This is becoming a pattern for Microsoft and the Xbox - first something goes wrong, and then the firm steps in to make amends on a

I was struck by just how many people had commented on problems with Xbox Live when we invited readers of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ News website to send in questions to Bill Gates.

Many were furious with the problems they encountered during the Christmas period.

If Microsoft believe Xbox Live is a serious entertainment platform, perhaps one day to rival TV networks or cable services, it has to ensure it is robust and good value.

There are 17.7m Xbox 360 users around the world, with some paying £40 a year for Xbox Live.

Sony, on the other hand, does not charge for its PlayStation Network, although the service is much more limited than Xbox Live.

The offer of a free Xbox Live Arcade game is good customer service, but there will come a point when saying sorry just isn't enough for some subscribers.

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