Apparently those who run Intel never gave up on a lifetime dream of acting like petulant children, choosing to remove themselves from what could be the greatest humanitarian project of this century, the One Laptop Per Child initiative.

Not wanting to be dictated to must have been part of the problem, as it appears that Mr. Negroponte was fairly stringent in his demands of the support offered by Intel. Mr. Negroponte was not really comfortable with the competition of the Classmate PC when the project was to be one of cooperation and not direct competition.

This is too bad for the children of the world, as Intel is capable of much higher volume production than AMD, as almost everyone knows, but also it makes the company look like it is unwilling to bend a bit to benefit a great many who will grow up to possibly use its products. Now the children will grow up with a heightened respect for AMD, and, should the company still be around when those children grow up, will look much more favorably upon AMD than Intel. (Remember that it only takes two or three of these children to grow up and become captains of industry to change the fortunes of a chipmaker. Intel will probably survive either way, but AMD could see a surge which could push it to heights that Intel never imagined. Imagine Intel playing catchup, not just in technology, as happened when Opteron first appeared, but in sales, too.)

Time will tell how much of a blunder Intel committed yesterday.

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[tags] Intel, OLPC, John Negroponte, Classmate PC, XO PC, AMD [/tags]