Gates and the $100 Laptop

Bill Gates is being a bit of an ass and, it seems, displaying a bad case of sour grapes.

"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.

Yeah, it would be great if really poor people could get broadband in their remote villages without even electricity.

Gates seems to be completely missing the point of the entire project and it seems to me he's belittling the effort of MIT in order to promote his own micro-laptop, which has a 7" screen.

Geez, Bill, why not get a machine with a decent sized screen that you can actually, you know, read text on?

For Gates' information the $100 laptop machines will have a hard disk- a 1Gb hard drive to be exact. They will also be Wi-Fi and cell-phone enabled. In some of the areas they are aimed at, the light from the screen could be the only light source available in the home.