Bill Gates puts foot in mouth

Bill Gates mocks MIT's $100 laptop project - Yahoo! News

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. "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.

I wonder if this little rant is due to the fact that Google is involved? Little sour grapes, maybe?

Before his critique, Gates showed off a new "ultra-mobile computer" which runs Microsoft Windows on a seven-inch (17.78-centimeter) touch screen. Those machines are expected to sell for between $599 and $999, Microsoft said at the product launch last week.

Lessee....a 7" screen....doesn't that sound like it might be a little hard to read the screen, too? But I suppose with a touch screen instead of a keyboard, that would solve the problem of "cranking the thing while you type." At ten times the cost. Yep, methinks I detect just a teensy hint of wine-in-the-making here.