It could transform life for billions of children, but one man's charitable dream of a £50 computer is under attack from a Silicon Valley giant. In 2005, when Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced his vision, experts queued up to say it couldn't be done, and that the professor's plan was little more than a well-intentioned dream. Yet Negroponte was not proposing a manned mission to Mars, or a new theory of nuclear fusion - just a plan to make affordable laptops for the children of the developing world. Early on, the omens were not good; when Negroponte employed Kofi Annan, no less, to unveil a prototype at a world summit in Tunisia, then the UN secretary general, managed to break the wind-up handle designed to power the computer in homes or schools without electricity. As a red-faced Negroponte hurriedly moved proceedings on, some observers, including the computer-chip giant Intel, dismissed the laptop as a "gadget". But now, with support from big corporations and component makers, Negroponte's vision has become reality. The initiative, dubbed OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) has produced a laptop hailed by its makers as " revolutionary". It costs just $176 (£88), and is made available to governments who will order them in batches of 250,000 at a time. But, just as orders are due to be placed, Intel has changed its tune as it jostles for position, with others who once doubted Negroponte's dream, in a market that could be worth billions. The idea for a cheap, durable laptop for children in the developing world came to Negroponte eight years ago in Cambodia. The professor and his family had set up a school in a remote village and given each of its pupils a laptop. According to Negroponte, the village, which at the time had no running water or electricity, was transformed. Attendance at the school went up by 50 per cent, and the first English word the children spoke was " Google". ... http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article2618226.ece