Mundie: It's important and Microsoft will have offers and we already do have products with the Classmate and even Negroponte's OLPC laptop, we might provide software for that, too.

We would love to see an environment where every kid has their own laptop, and that is the long-term outcome that you ultimately want to strive for. But we're also realistic in saying that even at $200 per device, given the number of kids that don't have anything today, I just think it's going to be a big lift for governments around the world to figure out how they'd buy even a $200 device for every kid.

The reason I highlight things like MultiPoint, is, if you had a class of 30 kids and you say you're going to even buy them a $200 computer, then that's $6,000. With MultiPoint, if you buy just a standard PC for about $300, and each mouse costs you $3, then for 400 bucks instead of $6,000, you have the opportunity to introduce the computer into the curriculum for every class there. Now that's not as good as every kid having their own laptop and they don't get to take it home with them, which is a big loss, but it gets them started.

IDGNS: I understand you are an avid boater?

Mundie: Yes, I have a 70-foot Sea Ray Express Cruiser.

IDGNS: Well, the Secretary General of ASEAN, in his speech this morning, pointed out that in the rising economic tide of the world, not all boats are rising at the same pace. The yachts are rising faster than the bamboo fishing rafts, so to speak. From your background, and with your 70-foot Sea Ray, how do you know what a person in the developing world needs in terms of technology?

Mundie: Well, in a way I take a little bit of exception to his analogy. You know, I travel around the world. My wife and I went down to boat in India a few months ago. So we're on this boat run by a captain, a cook, and a deckhand, and they all three had cell phones and the whole time that we're cruising in the rural backwaters of India, these guys are basically calling and making arrangements about where to pick up the next guy and where we're going to dock and stuff on their cell phones. I think the stories are myriad now about fishermen that have cell phones whose fishing productivity is being improved by both getting reports on where the fish are... and where they get to know what the market price for the fish is and where the markets are. So I contend that even those fishermen, as small as their boats are, actually are benefiting from access to these technologies.

So all of that is consistent with what I'm trying to do, which is to find economical ways to provide Internet-based services and access to those services through a low-cost computing environment and with software that's appropriate to their needs.

I think that the last big part is you have to create what we call a software ecosystem in each of these geographies to build the applications people want. Microsoft is not going to write the global fisherman market pricing application. It's just not a thing that we would do. But, on the other hand, if we can give people the tools then in southern India, for example, some guy can write a fishing application and make it available. You know, we've done that historically on the PC and we are increasingly doing that on the smartphones and as the Internet-based services emerge, Microsoft is committed to providing a platform that provides a programming model for the application developer to build and deploy the Internet-based component of these future applications.