Yes, you read right. At a Friday appearance in Beijing, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced a $US3 "Student Innovation Suite" that will include Windows XP Starter Edition, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Microsoft Math 3.0, Learning Essentials 2.0 for Microsoft Office and Windows Live Mail desktop.

What's the catch, you wonder, as you gently stroke your fingers along your $1000 shrinkwrapped copy of Vista Ultimate?

Well, the ultra-low-cost suite will only be supplied directly to governments in "low and middle income countries" (as defined by the World Bank; I checked, we don't qualify). The governments will then supply the software directly to pupils.

Bill says Microsoft wants two billion customers by 2015, and providing a low-cost suite is one way to reach the developing world punters needed fill-out the ranks of potential buyers. It gels nicely with the $US100 notebooks scheduled under the One Laptop Per Child programme, too, which you can read more about in May NZ PC World.

I'd also add that it's a good, constructive way to beat back rampant piracy around Asia and the developing world. I'm sure lots will find conspiracy theories and malevolent undercurrents (hello, Juha!). But I'm saying: nice one, Bill.

Microsoft also announced it would loan money to five additional countries under its Partnerships for Technology Access programmes -- Argentina, Botswana, Chile, China and Egypt -- so their governments in turn can provide affordable PCs to small businesses and communities.

Plus a slew of education and employment initiatives, including 200 "Innovation Centers" around the developing world to help local governments with education and job creation, a $US250 million Partners in Learning programme to help governments distribute its new low-cost suite, and a major partnership with the Asian Development Bank. Read about them here.