Some of the ways to save the planet even seem sensible. Last week several tech hardware manufacturers committed to making computers that use less energy. If a song were to sum up the year so far it'd probably be, 'We care a lot', by Faith No More.

But business saving the world, it turns out, looks a lot like ordinary business: everybody wants to be the guy with the biggest hard drive, as it were. The big fight of late has been about giving poor Third World kids very cheap laptops. You'd hope the technology legends fighting over this issue would be more grown-up than that. They're not. Cue the song 'When two tribes go to war'.

Nicholas Negroponte, from MIT's Media Lab, came up with the idea of giving laptops to poor kids in developing nations . . . laptops that cost just $100 to make. Behind it is the notion that access to computing power and the internet will raise their prospects for a decent standard of living and avoid a life of sewing footballs with their teeth for 5c an hour.

The hundred-dollar laptop project was scoffed at by large tech companies but laptops are now being made that do everything that was promised, except the current price point is $170. Negroponte's projections show they will hit the $100 sweet spot once they start shipping en masse when they sell direct to governments in lots of 250,000 or more.

The laptops are fantastic for what they cost. They can do what any other laptop can do, including surfing the net wirelessly. Negroponte thinks that these laptops could in theory be given to up to a billion children in the world to use as an educational tool.

The chip used in the laptop is made by AMD, and Intel, its main competitor and nemesis, is not taking this lightly, especially as the project known as the One Laptop Per Child looks like becoming a reality.

Intel is in catch-up mode and is pushing its own laptop for kids but Nicholas Negroponte is not happy with how Intel is going about this.

The new Intel 'Classmate' laptop currently costs $200 to buy and models itself on the ideals of the OLPC laptop.

Intel is subsidising the laptop for it to reach even this price, and the company is also taking the OLPC threat very seriously and has engaged in PR and marketing tactics that are winding up Negrponte.

Intel admits it sent the Nigerian government a document thrashing the abilities of the OLPC laptop and suggesting the Intel 'Classmate' was better for Nigeria. Nigeria was one of the first countries to sign up for the OLPC and the laptop sports the green and white of the Nigerian flag as a result. Just because the OLPC is part of a noble cause does not mean it is untouchable in terms of competing with it or commenting on it.

PR tactics aside, Intel is now going into a market it had never considered and if kids will now be able to access technology they would never have accessed it before, either via an Intel logo or an OLPC logo, then why the bellyaching?

Negroponte's vision has become a reality but he himself is failing to see that if he gets the biggest and secondbiggest chip manufacturers in the world to start producing cheap laptops for all the world's poor, then that is fantastic. Why have a turf war when you can both cover the same territory in half the time. So Intel and OLPC, why not do a duet and start singing 'I believe the children are our future'. . .

SOPRANOS SPOILERS

The Sopranos finished in the States last week, and for anyone who surfs the net and doesn't want to know how it ends, then we advise turning off your PC until RTE shows it. Even our favourite tech and business blogs are talking about it.

It is quite ironic that The Sopranos has itself created a whole grey market in dodgy downloads of the last episode.

We're sure the producers of the show wouldn't condone such a thing.

If you want a copy of the ending, let me know and I can also get you a good deal on some power tools.