OH this pisses me off to no end...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on Wednesday mocked a $100 laptop computer for developing countries being developed with the backing of rival Google Inc. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The $100 laptop project seeks to provide inexpensive computers to people in developing countries. The computers lack many features found on a typical personal computer, such as a hard disk and software.

"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 said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington.

"Hardware is a small part of the cost" of providing computing capabilities, he said, adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support.

Hmmm... are we a TAD jealous, Bill? Are we a little bitter that legions of children will grow up learning to compute on something OTHER than Windows?

Before his critique, Gates showed off a new "ultra-mobile computer" which runs Microsoft Windows on a seven-inch (17.78-centimeter) touch screen.

But of course! Competition. You just can’t sleep at night knowing you don’t control every aspect of people’s lives, (just 95% of us) can you? The open source community’s accusations that you are nothing short of a money-grubbing, power hungry BASTARD can’t be that far off mark, huh? Too bad this is an instance where you clearly have ZERO influence. Its eating away at you, isn’t it?

Those machines are expected to sell for between $599 and $999, Microsoft said at the product launch last week. (Full story)

OK, apparently Mr. Money Bags doesn't understand the concept of the $100 "One Laptop per Child" initiative. Or maybe he does and is frustrated because he knows he can’t compete. Maybe if he's going to piss and moan because his precious monopoly is in jeopardy, maybe he ought to, oh I donno... dip into his OWN pockets and make his own offering at a comparable price point - even if he has to loose money. Ya know - like he did with XBox??? The whole idea is to keep these things as inexpensive as possible, and here he is with his OWN offering that’s six to ten times more expensive? Hmmm… You willing to “eat” the losses Billy Boy? Put up or SHUT up.

"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.

OK, maybe he IS just stupid sometimes. The reason they don't have a hard drive is to (A) conserve power (these things are going to get charged by a hand crank) and (B) t... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]