Craig Barrett's $100 laptop smackdown

What was Craig Barrett thinking when he started talking smack about those hand-cranked $100 computers? In fairness, I don't know if the Intel chairman's quoted comments were prepared remarks or responding to an unexpected question from a reporter. But they're pretty bizarre in any case.

Here's Barrett, according to the Reuters story: "Mr. Negroponte has called it a $100 laptop -- I think a more realistic title should be 'the $100 gadget'...The problem is that gadgets have not been successful....It turns out what people are looking for is something that has the full functionality of a PC....Reprogrammable to run all the applications of a grown up PC... not dependent on servers in the sky to deliver content and capability to them, not dependent for hand cranks for power."

And Barrett's bottom line: "We work in the area of low cost affordable PCs, but full function PCs....Not handheld devices and not gadgets."

"Gadgets" haven't been successful? Well, that's news to the part of the business moving tens of millions of sub-PC devices every year. But gadgets certainly haven't been successful for Intel, which has poured heavy investment dollars into an effort to break into the handheld market.

Barrett knows this. Last month at the WSIS in Tunis he told an audience that Intel is hoping to reach a double-digit share of the mobile device chip market in the next few years. (That's right: Intel is hoping soon to reach 10% share in that expanding market, at a time when PC demand has flattened out and competition has increased.)

And would the world's poor prefer not to be dependent on hand cranks for power and satellites for connections to the rest of the world? Sure -- but wiring every village in the third world with electricity and phone lines ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Hand-cranked PCs are doable now.

I know Craig Barrett isn't really a clueless bozo, but this comment makes it sound like he thinks the farthest anyone could possibly get from civilization is his dude ranch in Montana.

And I realize there's no place in a low-cost, lime-green, hand-cranked PC-ish gadget for Intel. Intel is focused on the high end, and has been since Barrett took over. I'm glad Intel keeps pushing performance up. That's great for corporate IT shops. It's a lot less immediately useful to people who can't afford them.

And maybe Barrett truly believes those $100 gadgets are useless. Fair enough -- that's the business he's in.

But he might want to rethink whether that's the message he wants to grab headlines with. At a time when Intel's share is slipping in PCs and any major piece of the gadget market is years away, Barrett's words smack of desperation.