LONDON - Microsoft Corporation chairman Bill Gates has scoffed at efforts to build a $100 laptop for underprivileged kids in developing countries at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum on Wednesday. Gates was apparently not impressed with the tiny screen in the "One Laptop per Child" project and proceeded to let the world know about it.
"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 was quoted as saying at the forum. “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.”
The project includes a hand-cranked generator, which can be used to crank up the device in countries where electricity is a problem. Before ramming the $100 laptop, Gates unveiled the “ultra-mobile computer” which runs on Microsoft Windows and will retail for $599 and $999.
The One Laptop Per Chip project has been created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is backed by search behemoth Google Inc. The project envisages spreading awareness about computers to less privileged children, something that the world's richest man seemed to fault. The project's creators did not react to Gates' comments and only said the first machines would be ready by 2007.
