Bill Gates recently scoffed at the effort of MIT and other partners to build a $100 computer for emerging markets, mostly in the third world.
I first proposed a $100 computer in 1998, but was ignored because the idea was regarded as preposterous. Gates, I think, is threatened by the thought of a computer catching on among hundreds of millions of people that does not run Windows (the MIT system uses a version of Linux).
Instead, Gates thinks everyone ought to buy a much pricier $600 tablet computer, in part because it comes with "support." Gates does not explain where the world's poor are supposed to come up with $600 or the hundreds of dollars per year that Microsoft tries to extract from its customers with upgrades and fees. He also says the world's poor should first "get a broadband connection." He also fails to explain how they would do that. It is an especially odd remark since many Internet users in the U.S. can't get broadband connections.
A small computer with the right applications would be extraordinarily useful even without an Internet connection. As I outlined in 1998, when someone first turns the computer on, it could run a diagnostic program that tries to determine if the person holding the machine can read. If not, it starts teaching that person how to read and write.
Gates also talks about the need for power hungry hard drives, but these are not essential for a first computer, and drive up the cost without adding a lot of value. One of the problems with Windows is that it is too big a piece of software to run without a hard drive, whereas Linux is available in versions that run in small amounts of memory, so a hard drive is not required.
The Gates Foundation is doing good work trying to provide health care aid to the world's poor; it's hard to understand how Gates could be so tone deaf on the technology side.
Here is a suggestion for Bill: Take a billion or so of your cash hoard and write a version of Windows that will run on the MIT $100 computer. Then give it away free. It would create a huge base of potential customers, some of whom might eventually want to buy a copy of the full version of Windows. Otherwise, stop throwing brickbats at people who are trying to do some good in the world.