GATES SPREADS USER-FRIENDLY IMAGE ON VISIT TO SCHOOL

VERENA DOBNIK
The Columbian
03-05-1998
NEW YORK — While Congress investigates whether his computer empire is a monopoly, Bill Gates has been busy spreading a caring and user-friendly image.
On Wednesday, America’s richest man ventured into one of its poorest neighborhoods, telling Harlem schoolchildren who use his Microsoft programs that “the success I have will be given back to society.”
Gates has struggled to portray Microsoft as a benign and creative force in the computer industry. He was in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday fiercely defending the company before the Senate Judiciary Committee against accusations of antitrust violations.
The boyish billionaire, worth about $40 billion, also has been trying to humanize his high-tech image.
He recently visited schoolchildren in Silicon Valley, Calif., and libraries in rural Alabama; has appeared on talk shows; and on Tuesday night gave a toast to the Wright brothers — as fellow communications pioneers — at a star-studded Manhattan gala for Time magazine.
On Wednesday, Gates got personal with a classroom of about 30 sixth-graders at Mott Hall School — and they liked him.
“I wanted to meet the guy — I mean, meet the person,” said Darnell Moore, 11. “I think he’s a great man.”
The school is one of 52 across the country taking part in a Microsoft-Toshiba study on how laptop computers affect teaching and learning.
The Harlem students’ families — many of whom live below the poverty line — pay about $1 a day to lease their classroom computers. The school board chips in the same amount. Program supervisor Giulia Cox said Microsoft had offered to contribute but “we didn’t want to accept charity.”
“To have the computers, the kids make do — they learn to wear sneakers that might be a little more worn out,” Cox said.
The school of 400 students has no cafeteria or auditorium.
A smiling Gates quietly entered the classroom and asked four kids standing in front of laptops, “What are you guys up to?” The children eagerly showed him their projects.
Gates explained what he had been doing in Washington: “A group of senators asked me to come and talk about the computer industry. And they also invited my competitors.
“All that talk about competition is really healthy,” he told the students, adding it’s why “any one of you here will have the opportunity to start a business of your own.”
Fellow billionaire Ted Turner has chastised Gates for not giving away more of his fortune; last year, Gates gave away $135 million.
But Michael Pacheco, 11, said, “Money gets you stuff. … I don’t think he’s too rich — he earned that money.”
Pacheco said his laptop “made me smarter. My grades went up.” He said he downloaded a recipe for sweet-potato pie “and my mother and I made it together.”
Gates told the students he wants “to make sure that every library in this country will have a PC connected to the Internet.” He confided that he likes using computers because “my handwriting is very bad,” and mentioned that his 2-year-old daughter, Jennifer, uses a computer to play with Barney.
The kids came down pretty much on Gates’ side in the anti-trust dispute.
“You can’t have too much power — power is limitless. And he uses it to make the software easy to use,” said Moore.
Besides, he said, the laptop “changed my life. I’m more involved, I concentrate more, I learn more.” His project? “A study of solar, geothermal and nuclear energy.”
Microsoft on Wednesday announced the donation of $900,000 for community-room computers in low-income housing in New York City.
After the classroom meeting, Gates rushed to an interview taped for public television at the New York Public Library, to which he has donated $1.3 million worth of computers.
Gates said in the interview that he hopes the government won’t get in his way.
“You’ve got to make sure you’ve got something to give back (to society), that the government doesn’t screw things up,” he said. But “you want to give it out in a clever way.”

VERENA DOBNIK


Copyright 1998 The Columbian Publishing Co.