Bill Gates Ridicules $100 Laptop Project

Rob Updegrove 16 Mar, 2006 at 8:43am ET Article published in Tech

Bill Gates had mocking words on Wednesday for MIT’s $100 Laptop project, which aims to provide inexpensive computing for students in third-world countries.

“The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk … and with a tiny little screen,” Gates said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington.

“Hardware is a small part of the cost” of providing computing capabilities, he said, adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support.

Before his critique, Gates showed off a new “ultra-mobile computer” which runs Microsoft Windows on a seven-inch (17.78-centimeter) touch screen.

Those machines are expected to sell for between $599 and $999, Microsoft said at the product launch last week.

“If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you’re not sitting there cranking the thing while you’re trying to type,” Gates said.

He sounds a little full of himself, if you ask me…

Source: Reuters

Comments

16 Mar 2006 ~ 10:11am muddocktor Heh, I guess it's easy to talk like that when you are richer than sin. :shakehead
16 Mar 2006 ~ 10:37am RADA Well, I've seen one of these $100.00 laptops up close, its a toy, they look like they were made by Fisher-Price, but with much less quality. My neice's leapfrog pseudo-laptop learning tool has more capability, and she's only 14 months old.

Plus, he isn't the first person to ridicule this project, just the biggest name to do so.
16 Mar 2006 ~ 12:04pm CB Yea, it sound like he's full of himself, but he's also correct about the product.
16 Mar 2006 ~ 12:06pm Camman

GHoosdum wrote:

He sounds a little full of himself, if you ask me...

yeah he does

We're sorry... this story is not currently available

unbelievable that he would say something like that

BTW I call bull**** on this story because A) its already been pulled from Reuters and B) I really doubt he said "..can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type.."

edit// Reuters story is back up, i stand by my bs call tho
16 Mar 2006 ~ 12:47pm GHoosdum The story is still there. I fixed the link:
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-03-16T081431Z_01_N15248895_RTRUKOC_0_US-MICROSOFT-GATES.xml
16 Mar 2006 ~ 12:52pm Leonardo Whether or not Gates made the those rude comments or not, the $100 laptop is fiction. Sure, I imagine there are some prototypes floating around, but I firmly believe the "$100" part is figurative only. Also, the $100 cost, even if it were possible, does not include distribution costs.

I'm not deriding the program or its intent. It is a noble cause, no doubt. Let's not forget though, that the people promoting this project the most loudly have been promoting themselves and their organizations with the same volume. Nothing immoral or illegal with that, but it should serve to alert the news consumer that much hype should be expected.
16 Mar 2006 ~ 8:51pm Thrax Gates is being a realist. The $100 PC is a fantasy. You're lucky if that can buy you a god damn cell phone these days.
17 Mar 2006 ~ 7:44am stevy6 IF Bill Gates did say the quote it maybe based on the fact it will be LINUX based not windows

http://laptop.org/
it does exist but not yet in production

The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.

basic enough to use for kids .will probably get 3 for my kids when they exist(laptops not my kids)
17 Mar 2006 ~ 10:02am jradmin Considering that Sony can make gadgets like the PSP, I think the $100 laptop is a very real possiability.

I think so may of us live in a world where we don't have a need nor can we see a viable need for them that we forget there is a world that does need a product of this type.

If a device of this type can be made at an extremely low cost, then why bash it and not go forward with it? Every person in every country around the world has the right to experience technology. I think Mr. Gates is just mad that Microsoft wouldn't be getting a royalty check everytime one is bought.
17 Mar 2006 ~ 5:56pm Frank #1. the cranking is crap.. how about you
(a) type a paragraph and power goes..out.. 2 crank more power retype text .. goto Step (a)..

#2 the man made himself where he is.. stop being jaleous.. he did not beg, steal or kill for that (i hope).. borrow yes.. anyhow.. he knows what hes talking about. would you go to a library haveing blackberrys for pcs ??? i think its a scam to finance from gov or get tax crap form them ..

man those 3rd world people need food . not laptops. THEY WILL SELL them for a pound of rice.. like a crack addict for crack.
18 Mar 2006 ~ 3:49am FordP Cranking is Crap why ??
My old Psion Series 3 pocket computer went for 40 Hours on 2 AA batterys. You would only have to crank once a day to get a full days work done with it. It was so good with power it would stop the processor in between key strokes. Modern PCs waste most of the power and processor cyles. People making this computer should look at Psion's former masterpieces for insipation.
18 Mar 2006 ~ 6:21am Enverex Really need to get rid of this guest posting crap... but yeah, Gates does sound like his head is far implanted far into his ass.
20 Mar 2006 ~ 11:36pm Leonardo

Considering that Sony can make gadgets like the PSP, I think the $100 laptop is a very real possiability.

I think so may of us live in a world where we don't have a need nor can we see a viable need for them that we forget there is a world that does need a product of this type.

Well said. The entire third world is not starving, so I don't believe these low cost computers will be traded for life's essentials. Of course, there will be incidents, but then, there is computer theft and abuse in all countries, rich and poor.

$100? Perhaps, but not counting distribution costs. I would prefer to call them "Low Cost Computers". This could be very, very valuable for many parts of the world. It sounds like it will be perfect for email communications and light Internet usage. The whole idea behind this is to bring computer communications to places that don't have it. There are isolated villages in parts of the world where they have essentially no communication with the outside. The concept has huge potential.

And yes, I do think Gates is bitter because the new laptops potentially will introduce Linux to millions of people who otherwise would never have seen it.

$100? I just don't think so. With that said though, this project has garnered so much attention, and there is so much momemtum behind it, it will bear fruit.
21 Mar 2006 ~ 5:44am Enverex

Leonardo wrote:

There are isolated villages in parts of the world where they have essentially no communication with the outside. The concept has huge potential.

Just because they have a laptop it doesn't mean they'll have external communitcations. I doubt isolated villages in the middle of no-wheresvil are going to have decent phonelines or broadband and sure as hell not WiFi access points, lol.
21 Mar 2006 ~ 11:03am profdlp India is already well into a program to bring satellite access to even the most remote villages. There's no reason to believe that Internet access couldn't be worked into that. The same idea could work elsewhere.
21 Mar 2006 ~ 10:45pm Leonardo Right - technology leaping. There are many parts of the world where traditional infrastructure has never been built. Man of these "primitive" countries just bypassed hardwired telephone altogether and went straight to to cellular towers. It makes imminent sense. It must be much more efficient and cost saving to build a a few hundred towers rather than tens of thousands of miles of cabling and poles. The same can happen with Internet access.