The news was delivered by OLPC frontman Nicholas Negroponte himself, during remarks at this week's TED 2009 conference.

Blogger Ethan Zuckerman, reporting from TED, said Negroponte hopes the new open source hardware design will be "something that everyone copies."

"Commercial markets will go to no end to stop you. It's sort of a tragedy," Negroponte said. "So the future of One Laptop Per Child is to go 'from uppercase to lower case,' to 'build something that everyone copies.'"

According to Negroponte, the open design will lead to companies worldwide creating 5 to 6 million machines, per month, in three years time. That's a lot of little mean green machines with those weird alien wifi antennas.

And while this technically sounds like more of a licensing deal than true "open source," it will be interesting to see what companies cook up using the OLPC design over the next few years. If it catches on, that is. [Ethan Zuckerman via CNET]

Intel had a couple of Classmate 2s set out as well, which looks admittedly dated next to the tablet. The new design takes some cues from popular netbooks like the EeePC and the MSI Wind, with an emphasis on slimness and a forward-sloping keyboard. The case, though still in development, looks more businesslike than its predecessor. There's a new webcam that with vertical tilt capability, and a nifty home button on the screen's bezel that returns the user to the desktop. Speaking of the desktop, the Classmate still runs XP, and Intel has built a simple dashboard with commonly used icons for easy touch access, though using XP's regular functions with your fingers won't be any easier than on other touchscreen tablets. A stylus is included.
The fact that it looks and behaves like a consumer subnotebook is bewildering. Without a dedicated educational OS, multitouch or even kid-friendly looks the Classmate seems to have veered off into overcrowded netbook territory. It seems plenty functional as a compact tablet though, so if the price is right it could well succeed at that. The device is still in development, so at least Intel theoretically has a chance that make this thing interesting. [Giz at IDF]

Replacement is not the right word. We have no CEO. I have never held that title nor used it. I will continue to do what I do, no real change.

And in other news, the Windows version of the XO laptop should be released in less than 60 days, depending on how talks with Microsoft and OLPC go. [Laptop Mag]

The One Laptop Per Child program and Intel said Friday that the chip maker would join the board of the nonprofit and contribute funding...One Laptop Per Child's computers will continue to use processors from Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., but Intel is expected to work with the project on future technical developments.

Nicholas Negroponte has started a bitch-fight against Intel because, according to him, they are trying to drive him out of business by underpricing their OLPC rival, the Classmate. He says that Intel "should be ashamed of itself" arguing that by bringing a low-cost laptop to developing countries, they hurt "his mission enormously." His mission. Intel's Chairman Craig Barrett calls the notion "crazy." I'm going to go a step further and say that Negroponte's arguments are absolutely stupid. Clickity-clack on the jump to see more about the OLPC vs Classmate clash.

Negroponte argues that he and his mission are a victim of the fierce Intel-AMD war, since the OLPC is powered by AMD processors. According to him, Intel is distributing materials to governments comparing the Classmate to the OLPC, with titles like "the shortcomings of the One Laptop per Child approach."

Barrett answered Negroponte's claims, declaring to the CBS that Intel is not trying to drive the OLPC out of business, merely bringing low-cost computers to young people through the world. "Someone at Intel was comparing the Classmate PC with another device being offered in the marketplace" he said, "that's the way our business works."

And indeed, it is. We don't really know about each laptop's true technical merits. Nobody really knows which one is better because there's no side-by-side reviews yet. We don't know about Intel or the OLPC's marketing arguments. We don't know exactly what either of them are saying about each other to governments across the world.

The only fact we know is that the OLPC has a $176 price tag and the Classmate costs $200: both are designed to bring computing and the Internet to children in developing countries at very low cost.

So I don't care if the Classmate is priced below cost or the OLPC is made with fairies' dust. The only thing myself and anyone, including Negroponte, should really care about is that there's not only one, but two cheap computers for emerging nations. And that, no matter how you look at it, is a Good Thing™.

If Negroponte is telling the truth and Intel's ulterior motive to underprice their Classmate is its own long-term "benefit" for the sake of market share, the only true winners are the kids, the recipients of those computers. And if Intel is trying to push their option by highlighting its strengths versus the OLPC and the governments decide to buy Classmates based entirely on technical merit, that will be good for Intel but the true winners will again be the kids. I'm sure those children won't give a damn about what type of processor these machines have (in fact, I doubt they will give a damn about a computer over a sandwich at this point, but that's an entirely different debate.)

And what about if the governments decide to buy an OLPC instead? Well, maybe that will force Intel to drop their prices even more and once again the kids will be the ultimate winners, as they will have more powerful machines for less money.

I don't know about you, but I read Negroponte's arguments and they seem to be related to only one thing: his ego. BBC News says that Negroponte complained at the beginning of the year that his concept had received a lot of criticism and "yet after that criticism they are either copying it or doing things perfectly in line with the concept. Yes people laugh at it, then they criticise it, then they copy it." Maybe it's time for him to realize that the idea of creating such a beast may be his in the first place, but the more companies and countries (like India wants to do for a tenth of the price) get into it, the better it will be for everyone.

According to unconfirmed rumors relayed by a totally drunk and unreliable source, Negroponte has also complained to his teacher about Barrett stealing his chocolate pudding at lunch and drawing moustaches over all his Spider-man comics. "That Barrett kid is mean, mean, mean! MEAN I SAY!" he reportedly whinged. – Jesus Diaz

'$100 laptop' sparks war of words [BBC News]

Now called XO, the device has evolved into something both practical and sleek. Gone is the second prototype's hand-cranked generator, meant to free students from the need for an electric plug. (One broke off in Kofi Annan's hands when he demonstrated it at a UN tech conference last year.) Instead, the XO comes with a separate fist-sized generator. You pull a cord to make juice, like starting an old lawn mower.

Seriously guys. You better get your MIT acts together, cause this is ridiculous. – Jason Chen

This PC wants to save the world [Fortune via OLPCNews]

The project is being handled by Fedora developers, which is a a flavor of linux usually thought of as more suitable for beginners. There's a bunch of flavors of linux, but we won't get into it here. Sugar (its project name), well, looks a whole lot like standard Fedora, but has a good number of changes from the vanilla Fedora Core 5 builds that you can download and run on your personal PC if you like.

You can't underestimate how much the design of this system flies directly in the face of the conventional wisdom in the US of how IT in a school is supposed to work. With mesh networking, there won't be a hard firewall between the school and the community, or the rest of the web. Chat isn't diabled; it is explicitly enabled. The underlying software is not locked down; it is unlocked by design. If you've been writing this project off as a simple attempt to distribute cheap hardware, prepare to have your eyes opened.

As you can see in the picture, the laptop has the grown-up version of web and chat, not a completely dumbed down one. – Jason Chen

Trying Out the OLPC User Interface [eSchoolNews via Digg]

Negroponte added that pricing depends on how much RAM is installed in the low-cost PCs, but another key element in the unit's pricing is its sunlight-readable display, which he said won't be done until August or September. Seven countries are showing interest in the PC, with Nigeria, Brazil, Thailand and Argentina most interested in the concept. How does the cheap laptop run? According to Negroponte, "Like a bat out of hell." In that case, we want one, too. – Charlie White

Negroponte's now $130 PC due in April 2007 [ZD Net]

Liveright has gotten 1526 people to sign up so far, but the project is not endorsed by Nicholas Negroponte's Media Project, the hand-cranked computers are not being offered for sale, and even if they were, there is no specific plan to distribute all these contributed computers. If enough people sign up, though, we're thinking someone will be able to figure all that out. – Charlie White

$100 Laptop Pledge [PledgeBank] (Thanks, Jonathan!)