Intel supports laptops to poor kids

Intel Corp. said it would support a non-profit foundation's project to put computers in the hands of poor children around the world, reversing its long-standing opposition to the proposal.

The world's biggest chipmaker will join the board of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, which developed the XO laptop - a personal computer that it plans to put into production in September and sell for $176 (Lm56).

Intel markets the Classmate PC, a computer that competes with the foundation's XO laptop.

The two parties said they would be able to incorporate each other's technologies, and would also consider collaborating on developing a laptop.

The One Laptop Per Child project is the brainchild of Nicholas Negroponte, the former chief of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.

The foundation plans to sell the multimedia laptops to government agencies around the world, requiring each country to buy hundreds of thousands of the devices, and then give them to impoverished elementary schoolchildren at no cost.