Bill Gates mocks MIT's $100 laptop project

By Joel Rothstein Wed Mar 15, 8:00 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) Chairman and Chief Software Architect
Bill Gates on Wednesday mocked a $100 laptop computer for developing countries being developed with the backing of rival Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


The $100 laptop project seeks to provide inexpensive computers to people in developing countries. The computers lack many features found on a typical personal computer, such as a hard disk and software.

"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.

Gates described the computers as being for shared use, but the project goes under the name "One Laptop per Child." A representative for the project did not immediately reply to an inquiry seeking comment.

Earlier this year, Google founder Larry Page said his company is backing MIT's project. He showed a model of the machine that does use a crank as one source of power.

"The laptops ... will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data," according to the project's Web site.

Oh, and I presume many of you have already checked out the website, but for those of you who have not, or are not familiar with the $100 laptop project, you can find details on the machine and project here.

The strap also contains the plug if a power source is available, and I forget the exact ratio but the # of cranks to amt of power is pretty good. Not to mention they're linux based so they don't require the horsepower needed to deal with bloated MS code. I'd almost want one.

I guess networking would be the largest cost. How are these going to access a network? It will be using mesh networking, which I'm sure will be a great benefit, but only if there is that larger connection to an outside network. It would be cool if there was a wikipedia image in the memory (with correct local language). But for application and support cost, it is using free software and I doubt there is going to be much need for support, other than a repair center of some sort. Overall, very cool, but maybe Gates wanted his software on it instead.

Microsoft's position on this is interesting, since I'm fairly sure they were at first interested in providing software. This and the UMPC suggests that Microsoft may actually be in trouble, well "innovation challenged". After all in a world where computers are now not just getting cheaper, and faster, but also getting smaller it's no big deal to imagine a smaller version of a standard PC. But how well is Microsoft doing in all the other things that are now just very small computers, TVs, DVD players, phones, wireless routers...?
I've been reading Zwick's book on "designing for small screens", and XP is certainly not where I'd want to start in designing apps for physically smaller computers, even if they do have very high res screens. http://www.avabooks.com.sg/avauk/details.php?id=107

The idea that you need a PC to use software is a big lie. Yes, you can use software if you have a PC, but you don't need one. All you really need is a display with a keyboard, a mouse and, even a touchscreen, perhaps, and you need these things to be connected to a network, but that is all you need. You don't really need a PC.

You don't need a PC to watch TV because the TV is a terminal. Same thing with a phone - you don't need a PC to talk on the phone because your phone is a terminal. Same thing with a display - because your display is a terminal.

You can watch TV on a computer but that doesn't mean you need a computer to watch TV. You can call on a phone attached to a computer but that doesn't mean you need a computer to talk with someone on a phone. You can use a display, keyboard, mouse & touchscreen that is attached to a computer but that doesn't mean that you need a computer to use these things and the software that you interact with using these things.

All you need, in each case, is a network connection and the appropriate terminal hardware which, in the case of software, is a display, speakers, keyboard, mouse, touchscreen and microphone. In other words, you need rich user output devices and rich user input devices.

All the companies that build operating systems for computers, and all the companies that build computers, they all would have a dismal future if everyone realized this and demanded software terminals instead of PC's that are being used as software terminals. A PC with a browser and a net connection is doing nothing more than behaving as a terminal with a net connection. - It isn't being used as a PC.

The display makers need only to add a network connection to the display so that it can be plugged into the network (even wirelessly) as an option to plugging it into a PC. That's all they have to do. At that point the PC becomes expendible - an optional piece of technology. It goes the way of the adding machine, the typewriter and the fax machine - it disappears. And so, too, do the problems with computers disappear, the cost, the complexity, the wasted resources.

And then software is finally free of all the problems, difficulties and costs that plague PCs. It can happen, it needs to happen - it is happening. Believe it.

Bill Gates knows this. He just doesn't want to see his company collapse. Same for Micheal Dell. Same for Steve Jobs. They and many, many others sell us a lie that they know is a lie. Millions of people believe them. They are all wrong. And we all pay for it, every minute of every day.

The 770 is important for many things, most all, in my opinion, for the fact that it is the proof of this and that it shows us a way forward out of this lie.

A very well reasoned and articulated point Remote User. And I think that many computer theorists have speculated and have pushed for exactly the direction you are suggesting (network&terminal orinted approach vs isolated workstation). For specific tasks though, I guess the reality still necessitates a computer... in my case, graphics apps. Not to mention, its nice to have a machine that can handle may varying tasks. But I guess all that stuff in the end can also be provided via the network & terminal setup, theoretically, and I'm sure moves will be made in that direction eventually.

To confirm everyone's suspicion (though not Bill Gates) Steve Jobs did offer OS X for free as the OS for the $100 laptop, in a move I'm sure was motived by three parts altruism and seven parts increasing marketshare and profits. The project organizers politely rejected the offer, since they were looking for an open source OS. As an OS X user, I cannot but sing high praises of it, but it was the right move on the part of the project organizers to go open-source.

What seems to irk Microsoft beyond the long term problems outlined by Remote User is that in the short term, the thing uses Linux. Add China and Brazil, where governments have officially adopted Linux and its develpment, to most of the developing world where this laptop is targetted, and you have a mounting problem for the future of Microsoft market domination.

As a side note, I should also add that around December, Intel chairman Craig Barret also chided the $100 laptop as a "cheap gadget". This may have to do with AMD's participation in the project, but now that the UMPC has been revealed, their comments a few months back makes all the more sense.

I personally think the $100 laptop has excellent specs. Aside from the lack of hard disk (which is not needed for what this is intended), its specs roughly match that of the first generation iBooks from a few years ago.

I'm afraid what you're saying is basically correct, Remote User. I also think Gates and company realize that terminal-like devices are the future of computing; that's why they want to move to internet based applications with subscription fees to some extent (that and the holy grail of businesses: recurring and dependable revenue without having to produce anything new). I think they intended that to stall progress toward the point where using a computer is more like using a TV--and the OS doesn't matter because nobody really sees it anymore. I don't know, it's just a theory. I think people were saying that about them a couple years ago but I haven't heard much lately.

I wonder if Gates realizes that everytime he mentions the $100 laptop it makes more and more people wonder why they should pay $600-2000 for theirs. And maybe one or two of those people realize that it has something to do with the greedy, obese and wasteful software Gates wants to force them to put on it. It feels like there's been collusion between them and hardware makers for years: you put out the bloated and unreasonably inefficient software, and we'll sell the hardware that people will have to buy in order to make it bearable to use. Then eventually people will have to buy your software over again because your last version no longer support our hardware.

Anyway I'm afraid in the computing world I'm the equivalent of the people who wont put their money in a bank but keep it under their mattress. I don't want my applications and documents hosted somewhere I can't get to. I want it in the palm of my hand. It may be that I don't have internet access all of the time, but I have the feeling that I'm just the type of nut who doesn't trust the (computing) banks.

Incredible web site you've got there, Oafbot. Everybody should visit it to see how high is the professional caliber of people who are members of ITT.

The movement in X as a remote display protocol for the past several years, since X began its renaissance from near death in the mid 90's, is to make design changes and extensions which either establish on or transfer the individual graphics experience to the user side of the software balance equation.

Displays already have very sophisticated graphics circuits but the circuits which are affixed to the rear side of the LCD displays need to continue to integrate functions which are typically found on graphics cards and motherboard-based graphics subsystems. When the discrete functions of graphics cards are integrated with graphics chips and when the discrete functions of graphics chips are integrated with the display circuits themselves (instead of with a CPU) then the display rightly acquires the power to do the 'work' that impresses the user. The CPU should be remote to the user and should do the things that are not unique to the user - things like running application algorithms and manipulating data that is relevant to and shared by all users.

What comes over the network to terminals are not the raw images and video that characterize TV broadcasts, however. The network-driven terminal only needs information about what it is supposed to do for an individual user and undertakes the job of how to do it - the 'doing' of it - up to its display circuitry and built-in graphics engine.

There's no reason for any user on any graphics display that is network driven (i.e., a terminal) to suffer graphics performance limitations. Television has been done with a brute-force video approach which is to be rejected in the future. IP television and network-driven software must use intelligent, compressed data for graphics and video - packet video. Gates is directly fuelling the fear the PC-uber-alles crowd thrives on - that display terminals and network-driven graphics are inherently unsuitable - does not belong in today's world.

For my part, I wish that the $100 PC was a $100 touchscreen network display. It would be something very much like the next generation 770. Sadly, I think that as a PC it may well fail - and that as a next-gen 770 it would be a huge success. The people at MIT need to get out more. Copying Bill Gates vision 'PCs Everywhere for Everybody doing Everything' is no plan at all if you want to help the people of the world benefit from the Internet and all the technology around it.

I'm not sure I follow Gates' logic. He said: But isn't the point of having the crank that millions of the users of this computer won't even have consistent access to electricity?

How in tarnation are they supposed to have access to broadband in that case?

And while I think Remote User has many useful insights, I think the point of the OLPC computer isn't to revolutionize how people compute, but at the most basic level for many people in the world just to make it possible to compute at all.