A Year Ago: Gates 'impressed' by Blair

Commenting on the Prime Minister's initiative to get more PCs into UK schools, Bill Gates told ZDNet UK last night he was "impressed he'd made it such a priority for his government."

Gates confirmed he had met with Prime Minister Blair during a recent visit to the UK, where he had discussed the initiative. "The biggest problem is the expense," said Gates, but would not be drawn on future plans for investment in the UK beyond saying "we announced the Cambridge deal at a press conference in the UK three weeks ago... we are going into several countries."

Earlier, he told a gathering of several thousand Comdex attendees that one of the top 10 reasons he loved his PC was he could use the Barney education software with his 18-month-old daughter.

ZDNet UK spoke to Bill Gates at an informal walk-around amongst some 4,000 journalists from the world's press, who have gathered this week in Las Vegas to cover Comdex Fall, the world's largest computer show.