Posted on 03/16/2006 4:35:16 PM PST by twntaipan
Bill Gates was recently named one of Time's people of the year for the incredible amounts of money he has given to fight poverty and disease around the world. But just because Bill cares about poor people doesn't mean that he wants to see them use Linux.
Gates demonstrated the new Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum this week, and later began trash talking the US$100 PC currently under development at MIT. It's hard to see how a philanthropist could not love a device designed to put basic computing power in the hands of every child on earth, but Gates reached deep down inside and found a way.
"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 also said at the conference that "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." He's apparently referring to the seven-inch screen sported by the US$100 PC, a size shared by—you guessed it—the initial UMPCs.
Though Gates argues that the cost of hardware is tiny compared to the cost of support and building a network infrastructure, it's still a substantial burden for most of the world's poor. Take Uganda, for instance, where the average income is US$270 a year, according to the World Bank. Even a US$100 machine would be too much for families to afford, but it's a relatively small sum that can be subsidized by local governments and international organizations. Boost that cost by a factor of seven or eight, and it's suddenly a lot harder to put computers into as many hands.
Gates' contention is that more powerful hardware can do so much more than the cheaper machine. This may be true, but people who have never used a computer don't need to play Halo, they don't need to manage a 40GB music collection, and they don't need seamless access to iTMS. What they need are the basics: e-mail, the web, word processing. They also need reliability and a power source, both of which are provided by the US$100 PC's hand crank and stripped down feature set (no hard drive, for instance). Many don't have continuous access to electricity, either, making it hard to keep something like the UMPC functioning in rural Cambodian villages.
It's hard not to see money and corporate politics at work here. After all, less than two months ago Microsoft was also trashing the inexpensive MIT computer—and suggesting that a cell phone should take its place. Intel has also been a hater, and in December an executive dismissed the new computer as a gadget.
The biggest rivals of Microsoft and Intel (AMD, Google, and Red Hat) are all substantial contributors to the new project, which does not use Intel hardware or a Microsoft operating system, and doesn't stand to make anyone a pile of money (though it will be a commerical venture). still, you would hope that such tech heavyweights as Microsoft and Intel could lend some assistance (or at least stop the usual FUD) for a project of this magnitude, but that's apparently too much to ask.
I wonder if Mr. Bill Gates has been to Africa? I figure with all that cash he probably has been there (he could probably buy all of Africa if he wanted).
This link talks about the development of computers in Africa for use in tropical climates. They too advocate diskless computing, not because it lowers cost, but because it is better suited to the climate.
Sometimes it almost seems like every time I look up Microsoft is introducing new technology intended exclusively to prevent me from installing Windows on every computer I own from the same disk. It has taken me several minutes to bypass these safeguards on occasion. They should spend more time producing better software and less trying to hamstring the users.
Ummmmmm, no.
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