FRIDAY, JAN 4 (News Locale) - Just six months after joining the One Laptop Per Child bandwagon, Intel announced that it is leaving the project after OLPC founder Nick Negroponte demanded that the chip maker stop marketing the Classmate PCs. 

Intel had agreed to work along with OLPC in spite of being at loggerheads with Negroponte when the chip maker had released its version of low cost notebooks in form of Classmate PC. Negroponte had accused Intel of deliberately selling the Classmate PCs at a lower price in order to price out his organization's XO laptops.

Confirming that Intel has decided to leave the OLPC project, the company spokesman Chuck Mulloy revealed that OLPC had asked Intel not only to stop the sales of Classmate PCs, but also to end its associations with other platforms.

"We’ve reached a philosophical impasse. Negroponte had asked Intel to end its support for non-OLPC platforms including the Classmate PC and other systems. He wanted us to focus our support exclusively on the OLPC system. We've always said there will be many solutions. The most important priority is to serve the need", Mulloy added.

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) prject is the brainchild of Nick Negroponte and is designed to provide laptops to children of developing countries at a price of $100 per machine. However in recent times, the project has been hit by the weak dollar forcing an increase in prices to almost $186.

The first official order for these "$100 laptops" came from Uruguay, which has already purchased 100,000 such machines for its school children.

The OLPC machines come with a keyboard that switches languages, a video camera, wireless connectivity, an Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) microprocessor, and Linux software. While the laptop uses Linux software, Microsoft is trying to make its Windows XP software work on the machine. The laptop, however, has no hard drive, and uses flash memory and four USB ports to add memory and other devices.

The project had the support of Google, Intel, eBay, Advance Micro Devices, and News Corporation, but Intel has now chosen to part ways.

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