Designers envision $12 computer
A TEAM OF MIT DESIGNERS is working to create a computer based on the Apple II that would sell for approximately $12.
American graduate student Derek Lomas came up with the idea after he observed Bangalore residents using a cheap keyboard and Nintendo-like console to run simple games and programs.
According to Lomas, computer literacy could help people earn "$1 an hour instead of $1 a day".
A six-member team has already volunteered to write improved programs that would provide the devices with internet access via mobile phones. The team also hopes to allow users to write and store their own programs by adding memory chips to the rudimentary machines.
Austin-Breneman, a 25-year-old mechanical engineer, said the super-basic computers would be a great educations tool that "could give kids exposure to keyboards, typing and mouse usage at an early age". µ
L'Inq
Boston
Herald
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Let's bring back the Vic-20! C-64. Best part is using the TV as monitor.
Just get a C64 DTV, gut the games from it, you're done. $12 computer.

Why keep re-inventing the wheel?

See my next comment for the quick and easy solution to world peace.
Who needs proper sanitation, healthcare or true democracy (as opposed to the obscenity that is the caste system) when you can give kids dirt-cheap computers?
lame computer, $12
mobile that works as an internet modem, $100
mobile broadband signature, $50/month
laughing @ INQ articles, priceless

H. Ruiz, darling, i suggest you take a trip to India sometime soon. 
I've lived there all my life. The urban population is approaching 50%, and in the cities at least the caste system is something you read about in the text books. In the provinces, an education and job decides your status. Things are changing so fast, it'll make your out-of-date head spin. Yes one reads things in the news frequetly, but thats the same as reading about domestic crime in the UK - its not exactly like a horror movie in real life is it? Up the population to 1.3 billion, increase reporting.

The world is not what is in the news. You should have learned it by now instead of self-righteously pontificating.

And by the way, one does not exclude the other. Everything needs improving in India, and all hands are welcome. What are YOU doing, other than blowhard-ing from the side?
Yet another "breakthrough" by that one-time admirable institution, the MIT.

I guess that M stands for marketing...