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Networking with Negroponte

• Rory Cellan-Jones
• 9 Jan 08, 04:52 GMT

Just before we sat down for an interview in his suite on the 28th floor of the Las Vegas Hilton, Nicholas Negroponte got up and popped out into the corridor to have a word with someone. The founder of One Laptop Per Child wanted to catch Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, as he passed by with his entourage. The two men have met many times, and Negroponte describes the Rwandan president as one of the few world leaders who really understands IT.

In his mission to sell his vision of a little laptop which could transform education in the developing world, Nicholas Negroponte has been a tireless networker, charming and badgering politicians from Lagos to Lima. He had just flown in from Mexico, where he has been trying to seal a deal to sell more XO laptops. Yet in recent months he has been struggling against a tide of mounting criticism of his project, and you sense that the bust-up with Intel has been the most aggravating episode of all.

His PR minder had told us he would only answer one question about Intel, but he answered four before we moved on. And in that time there was some strong stuff. He accused Intel of behaving like a cheating spouse in repeatedly pushing its classmate laptop and badmouthing the XO. It is a charge which the chipmaker rejects with contempt.

Off camera, Mr Negroponte was also pretty cheesed off with some of those who built up the XO laptop and are now knocking it down. A couple of reviewers had been unkind about the XO laptop, complaining that it was slow, and touch-typing was a challenge. He grumbled that it was aimed at kids, not fat-fingered old journalists.

Then his mood brightened when I told him about one young fan of the laptop. When I filmed in Nigeria in November OLPC volunteers gave me an early prototype to bring home to my 9-year-old son. Rufus got the hang of it much more quickly than I had, and supplied an enthusiastic review for the 成人论坛 website.

The trouble is, it isn鈥檛 the likes of Rufus who鈥檒l make Mr Negroponte鈥檚 laptop a success. He needs to convince a lot more African and Latin American governments that they can afford what is still a pretty hefty investment in computers in schools. And whatever you think of Intel鈥檚 motives, it is training teachers and supporting the spread of computing in the developing world. In the end, a mighty corporation with a professional marketing operation may have a better chance of achieving that mission than the world鈥檚 best digital networker.