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Article: Intel in spat over child-friendly laptop for the developing world.(Dispatches)
- Article from:
- The Sunday Independent (South Africa)
- Article date:
- June 10, 2007
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Independent News & Media PLC. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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BYLINE: Simon Usborne
In 2005, when Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced his vision, experts queued up to say it couldn't be done, and that the professor's plan was little more than a well-intentioned dream. Yet Negroponte was not proposing a manned mission to Mars, or a new theory of nuclear fusion - just a plan to make affordable laptops for the children of the developing world.
Early on, the omens were not good; when Negroponte employed Kofi Annan, no less, to unveil a prototype at a world summit in Tunisia, the then United Nations secretary-general, managed to break the wind-up handle designed to power the computer in homes or ...