Intel Bails on Kid Laptop Project

Intel has dropped out of its uneasy partnership with the "One Laptop Per Child" global nonprofit program, designed to put inexpensive computers in the hands of millions of children in developing countries. Intel has been feuding with project founder Nicholas  Negroponte, an MIT professor on leave who developed the inexpensive XO computer that's the program's first machine, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Joint plans for a new low-cost laptop have been scrapped. Intel claims Negroponte demanded Intel stop selling its own low-cost computer, the Classmate, in developing nations, and stop supplying chips to other laptop companies targeting kids in those countries. "We can't accommodate that request," said an Intel spokesman. "We've reached a philosophical impasse." (More One Laptop Per Child stories.)