Gates: Hardware Will Be Free

Hardware costs will fall sharply within a decade to the point where widespread computing with speech and handwriting won't be limited by expensive technology, Bill Gates said Monday.

"Ten years out, in terms of actual hardware costs you can almost think of hardware as being free -- I'm not saying it will be absolutely free -- but in terms of the power of the servers, the power of the network will not be a limiting factor," Microsoft's chairman said.

The world's largest software maker is betting that advances in hardware and computing will make it possible for computers to interact with people using speech and that computers which can recognize handwriting will become as ubiquitous as Microsoft's Windows operating system, which runs on more than 90 percent of the world's personal computers.

Gates also said advances in programming will allow software developers to create applications in less time by using visual representations of the inner workings of software rather than writing lines of programing code.