$100 for a laptop for a child in the poorest countries is still too much for Nicholas Negroponte. The founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, and founder and current chairman of the One Laptop per Child project (OLPC) wants to give portable computers to all the children in developing countries.

Nicholas Negroponte, the head of the One Laptop per Child project, is in the news again, this time trying to rationalise the appearance of Windows XP on the laptop manufactured by the project.

The one laptop per child (OLPC) project, a brainchild of MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, will soon find its way into Indian homes.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is an amazing project that aims to give every child in the world a laptop with a cost of just $100 a laptop and they also are windup so in countries where there is no or little electricity you can wind the OLPC up to get it working.

When Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the One Laptop Per Child project, said two months ago that the project needed to be managed "more like Microsoft" he was speaking nothing but the truth.

I didn't intend for OLPC to become one of my favourite topics, I just happen to notice a lot going on about it in the press, and sadly a lot of it is just plain wrong. Take, for example, a recent article by Sam Varghese, entitled "OLPC: one virus per child" [which] surmises that because Microsoft is working hard to provide Windows XP for the XO Laptop and Nicholas Negroponte made a comment about reorganizing the One Laptop Per Child organization to be run "more like Microsoft", the XO Laptop is doomed to be a vessel for spreading computer viruses worldwide.

There's nothing like allegations of predatory conduct to bring two organizations together. Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project has decided to bring Intel on board as a partner and a possible future supplier, just a few months after Negroponte went on 60 Minutes and essentially accused the chip maker of trying to destroy his low-cost PC project.

OLPC now famously stands for One Laptop Per Child. And while anyone can purchase the device, rest assured the emphasis is firmly on child. The iconic green-and-white machine is unlike any computer you've ever used, and it represents a first — if rocky — step toward a new vision for youth and technology.

The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) plans to launch OLPC America in 2008 to distribute the low-cost laptop computers originally aimed at developing nations to needy students in the United States.