I am easily satisfied with the very best - Winston Churchill
|
|
|
Indian Government announces $35 laptop
THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT has cooked up a $35 touchscreen laptop pitched at students.
The low cost device, which naturally runs Linux, is being readied for production with India's human resource development minister Kapil Sibal saying, "The motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35, including memory, display, everything."
While $35 is pretty impressive, even for a nation that is known for cutting costs, according to Sibal the aim is to bring the cost down to just $10. While the minister pointed out that the system would have many of the same amenities found on more expensive machines, he also mentioned that the hardware was designed to accept new components should users' needs change.
It seems the Indian government felt it was necessary to go it alone, even with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and Intel's Classmate on the market. Those machines do cost significantly more and given the growing technological prowess of India, it's little surprise that a home grown design is about to outdo more mature rivals.
Sibal said that the Indian government is looking for hardware manufacturers to make its design a reality. µ
Share this:
Share
I am co-founder of India's first cloud eLearning company - BigGyan (BigGyan.com). I am neither surprised nor amazed at this. It sounds too good to be true but as far as tech is concerned, the industry as a whole is already at a place where this is expected. Just see the number of cheap mobile phone companies that have come up recently. As far as hardware is concerned, netbook is nothing but a slightly bigger touch phone. By 2011 (when this product will come to market), industry will be saturated with such products. What I am concerned about is that, why government of India needs to launch such new products and make a mockery of themselves when they fail. Mr. Sibal again has all right intentions just that he ends up going in wrong directions. We have seen so many products by so called IITians where they create fastest car, world's most fuel efficient car. Somehow, I have never seen any of them to make to the market. It is better that Hon Minister sticks to policy making than engage in Buzz Marketting for his government.
I WANT ONE!!! Enough said.
Even at $35, I end up wondering why these countries and programs think that the best way to improve education is to give students laptops. There are books, there are teachers, there is paper. A laptop isn't going to help give a student access to better schools and higher education. It won't encourage teachers to work in rural districts. It won't give accessibility and opportunity. All it does is give the student some technology so that the students can stay in their place and not access real facilities and opportunity. Meanwhile, the people-in-high-places can make it seem like they are helping the "forgotten" while also bragging about their new technology.
Regardless of the OS, a touch screen, wireless-enabled laptop for $35 is laughable.
I guess the first thing to do is to throw out an outrageous claim that gets everybody's attention (that's called PR), then get funding from the government to for all the development work and to pay salaries. After about a year, you come back and say that you were wrong and it really will cost a lot more.
Get serious. What can you buy for $35 ? More still, what can you get for $10. Can $35 even pay for the case + battery ? A cheap 4G SD flash card costs ~$12. Maybe you can get a cheap digital watch for $10
Wake up. You can build amazing machines on paper, but you need more than paper to get it to work and $35 won't pay for the pieces.
You always get what you pay for. $35 won't get you much. At that price, this thing will be a piece of crap.
Otherwise it could be a good way to get some "friendly" govt officials onside as "paid consultants" who will say that your idea to build it should be given funding.
This funding would cover: building a new plant, paying worker's wages for the first 12 months, paying for materials, etc etc.
All you need to make the plans look legit is hire a "famous firm of accountants" like Arthur Anderssen (now known as Accenture). If Arthur A could do it for Enron ;-))
They simply announce . Iam pretty sure that it won't become a reality . It's the history of India