Posted on 02/03/2009 8:09:23 AM PST by mnehring
The 'world's cheapest laptop', developed in India, was unveiled by Union Minister for Human Resources Development Arjun Singh at the Tirupati temple on Tuesday evening.
The laptop, jointly developed by several organisations, such as the University Grants Commission, the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, will be priced at around $10 to $20 (about Rs 500 to Rs 1,000), officials said.
S K Sinha, joint secretary in the ministry for education, giving a demonstration of the device which is smaller than the normal laptop, said that it will need some more fine-tuning. He said the laptop is expected to reach the market in about six months.
Arjun Singh had an interaction with the vice chancellors of the remote states like Jammu and Kashmir and Manipur to prove the point that the device will be able to bring about high quality networking among the various institutions of higher education and also increase the skills of e learning of the students in rural areas.
The project has already created a buzz in the laptop industry across the world.
The laptop has 2 GB onboard memory with wireless Internet connectivity. To make it useful for the students, especially in the rural areas, the scientists have made it low power consuming gadget.
The mission was launched at a huge gathering of academicians and the officials from across the country including thirty vice chancellors of central and state universities at the campus of Sri Venkateshwara University Tirupati.
Like the National Mission on Education through ICT, the laptop is also aimed at improving the skills of students, both at the school and higher levels. Under the mission the government also intends to provide high-speed Internet access to the schools to download e-books and e-journals and other material. Students will be able to download the material through the 'Sakshat' portal.
The goal of the national mission is to increase the enrollment in higher education in the country by 5 per cent over the next five years. The government will subsidise 25 per cent of broadband connectivity costs for private and public colleges.
The $10 laptop is being seen as India's reply to One Laptop per Child's XO and Classmate of Intel. The XO, created by scientist Nicholas Negroponte and MIT Media Lab was originally targeted to cost only $100 but by the time it was ready to enter the market its cost went up to $188. The Classmate notebook PC from Intel was priced at $ 300 a piece.
In contrast, the Indian government's effort to market lap top at only $10 has caused a flutter in the international laptop market and many players are curious to know the details of the costing and how Indians managed to keep the cost so low.
Nicholas Negroponte is not fully satisfied with the cost projection. "I fear it is not serious. We'd love a $20 laptop but the display costs more," he was quoted as saying by Boston Globe.
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How much does the OS cost?
I’ve got a 5 dollar lap top at home. Start the line to my right to place your order.
I’m researching more details on the processors, OS, etc and will post when I can find..
Meanwhile US based Apple computer unveiled their $3K laptop with glowing keys to keep the attention of the herb smoking American teenager.
Laptop or lapdance?!
Impressive!
>I’ve got a 5 dollar lap top at home. Start the line to my right to place your order.<
I’ll collect the $5.00 for a cut.
...15 day warranty...
Kidding. This is pretty astounding. DellAuction.com can help you fetch a great 'refurbished' lapton for about $450-$500 (I've bought there in the past). And I thought THAT was a great deal!
Geeks.com is also a great resource for refurbs. If you want a Mac, Apple has a refurb/closeout store with great deals.
15 days... That is probably the length of time until the clay of the display/keyboard dries out so that it will no longer accept impressions with the cuneiform stylus...
Is Michael Phelps going to endorse it?
Put it on Craigslist. Someone is certain to send you a perfectly good money order for $500.00, and all you’ll have to do is mail the laptop and $495.00 change back!
Asus EeePC laptops can be purchased for under $300 (though better to buy the ones online vs Target’s really stripped down model.)
Very happy with them.
Well, if you could build a laptop that was designed to never be upgraded, ran on embedded software, and basically was to be thrown away when upgrades or repair was needed, I’ll bet one could really get the manufacturing cost down.
I’m also suspecting these things have a pretty small display screen.
Regarding the cost, I am reminded of the electronic tuners in TV’s that replaced the old mechanical barrel tuners. They offered the customer a far superior product and, once manufacturing was ramped up, were a fraction of the cost to produce. I suspect that with OLED’s and other manufacturing shortcuts it would be possible to produce a sub- $100 laptop. It is not relevant that the OLED has a lifespan of 5 or 6 years. One would have gone through 20 computers in that timespan. :)
The computer truly has become a commodity. No wonder Microsoft is laying off for the first time in their history. The operating system works, works well, and we just are not seeing the changes we saw when we went from dos to NT based windows. I think the days of making money selling an operating system have gone the way of the days (shortlived) of making money selling a web browser.
Man, we are really living in interesting times.
I got my wife a NEW HP laptop for $430 six months ago. I dumped the MS office 2007 teaser for Open Office. She loves the thing. She travels with it, uses it in her business, watches movies on the plane, uses the WI-Fi on a regular basis.
I’m done paying over $500 for any computer. ‘Course, I’m no longer into gaming, but even the WWII internet flight simulater works flawlessly on her machine.
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