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

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.