Children Vs Intel

Glimpsing Nigeria's Digital Lifeline by Jonathan Fildes
Intel says bye to One Laptop by Rory Cellan-Jones

Under the hood of the $100 laptop by Andrew Webb

John Naughton's take in this week's Observer was also interesting. As usual.
He says of OLPC's 'partner':

"It was a strange marriage. The first big contract signed by OLPC was with the government of Peru, which bought 300,000 XOs. Its vice-minister for education was then visited by an Intel salesperson, who is said to have comprehensively disparaged the little green machine. The politician apparently took notes of the exchange, which he then shared with Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of the OLPC project, who shared them with Fortune magazine. 'It was unbelievable,' according to Negroponte. '"The XO doesn't work, and you have no idea the mistake you've made. You'll get into big trouble", that kind of stuff. We kept the sale, but when one of your partners does that, what do you do?'"

Here was a clear attempt to sabotage the project by a mega-corporation furious that a huge market was being denied it, but too blinded to see that the future markets resulting from a succesful OLPC would benefit them much more in the long term.
It is also surely no co-incedence that the windows machine is favoured by the most authoritarian educational systems.