Gates Mocks MIT's $100 Laptop

QuietLagoon writes 'Reuters is reporting that Bill Gates is making fun of the one laptop per child initiative to revolutionize how the world's children are educated. '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. '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.'

Comments

Re:I would criticize Gates..

[babbling]

That's a load of crap. When Microsoft was trying to get involved in this project, he thought it was great.

Now that the organisation making this laptop has rejected Microsoft, it's crap? Forgive me for being paranoid, but I don't think that's genuine concern...

Bill Gates is now officially a bitch

[mwvdlee]

Gates is just spreading the usual FUD. He seems to "misinterpret" the simple facts and spins till they're dizzy.

Shared: It's "One Laptop per Child"; no sharing.

Diskless: The machine has peer-to-peer networking built in; disks would be slower.

Tiny screen: It's a bigger screen than my PocketPC. And I bet 6 of those screens are bigger than his 6x more expensive "alternative".

Network cost: It's got builtin wireless networking; no network expenses needed.

Application cost: That's why they didn't choose Windows.

Support cost: It's a total package; if it's broken in either HW or SW, replace the entire machine and fix the broken one centralized.

Broadband connection: Because these educational systems are meant to be used for downloading the latest movies? Besides, the wireless network will probably be a lot faster than the 56k6 modems a lot of people are still using.

Reading what you type: That's where the dual-mode LCD screen comes in; something a "decent computer" hasn't got...

Crank: ...and being able to actually power it without an outlet would help readability too. The crank is only one of several ways to provide power, it can also get powered just like a "decent computer".

I think that debunks all of Gates' lies.

Re:Education starts only with opportunity

[dtsazza]

Correct - it was the Chinese mystic philosopher Lao Tzu who first said it.
 
...and playing Civ 4 pays off again! (It's the quote you get when you research the Fishing tech, naturally...)

Re:Useless for Vista

[mrchaotica]

so now they're FUDing it.

Exactly. He's just pissed that the computer is going to run only Free Software.

The reality is that Gates is blatantly lying when he says that applications and network connectivity are a bigger part of the cost than the hardware. First, the applications are (big and little-f) Free. Second, the network connectivity is free as well, because these things are designed to make their own mesh network.

If it's so useless then why did he offer Windows?

[jacoplane]

From Wikipedia: "Steve Jobs had offered Mac OS X free of charge for use in the laptop, but according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders, the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with: "We declined because it's not open source"[4]. Therefore Linux was chosen. Microsoft's Bill Gates has attempted to convince Negroponte to use a version of Microsoft Windows on the laptop, but Negroponte turned him down. Some of Negroponte's friends told him Microsoft might then attempt to craft its own version of the laptop, but he responded such a development would be "great", as it would speed up the process of delivering cheap laptops."

Maybe Microsoft is ticked off with MIT because they were too insistent on OSS, and they view that as a threat.

Re:Useless for Vista

[mrchaotica]

Wow, not only are you wrong, but you're also an asshole! According to the slashdot summary, Gates mentioned 3 things: network connection cost, application cost, and support cost. He said these separately, meaning that he claims there is a per-copy cost to BUY the software. This claim is false. I made no mention of the third part, which is support cost; you're the one who read something in my post that wasn't there!