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What's so bad about a $100 laptop?
Mar. 20, 2006

I wish I had told Gates where to stick his sneer at $100 Linux-powered laptops in favor of Microsoft-sponsored "ultra-mobile computers" that will run between $599 and $999, but Robin Miller did the job for me in his recent NewsForge column.

Miller makes the point that maybe for Bill Gates there's no real difference between $100 and $600, but there sure the heck is for a lot of other people. As someone who grew up on a dirt road in the middle of no-where West Virginia, I know exactly what Miller is talking about.

Miller also makes the good point that, despite what MIT Media Lab professor Nicholas Negroponte and father of the One Laptop per Child initiative has said, it may very well cost more than a $100. Still, putting a laptop that's as cheap as possible into the hands of children is a laudable goal.

There is, however, one thing that puzzles me about Gates' widely reported remarks: he knows better. For all the time I spend time heaping scorn on the quality of Microsoft's software and revealing the dirty secrets of its business practices, Bill Gates, through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, does an incredible amount of good for the world.

No, he's not Andrew Carnegie, the 19th century richest-man-in-the-world who thought that the rich had a moral obligation to give away their fortunes. Still, Gates has given away billions to benefit the poorest of the poor. So, why is he throwing dirt on the $100 laptop movement?

Is it because Linux will be powering these basic laptops, and an entire generation of third world people will grow up knowing Linux before Windows? That's the only explanation I can think of.


-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols



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