AMD, Intel Keep Planning For Super Cheap PC

Two of Silicon Valley's biggest technology rivals will promote initiatives this week to grow their global business by providing low-cost computers to developing countries. Intel is announcing it will spend $1 billion to speed up the marketing of inexpensive computers to such emerging markets as such as India, China and Mexico. Its rival, Advanced Micro Devices, is already making bare-bones computers that cost $250 or less.

AMD is also putting its chips into the $100 laptops being developed for the world's low-income children by a non-profit organization started by MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has criticized the $100 laptops for depriving the poor of some important computer functions. The laptops run the low-cost, open-source Linux operating system, which offers some competition for Microsoft's Windows. But Negroponte has said a $100 laptop could do much the same things as a $1,000 laptop


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