Category: News and Views
NEW DELHI | Fri Jul 23, 2010 8:43am EDT
India has come up with the world's cheapest "laptop," a touch-screen computing device that costs $35.
India's Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal this week unveiled the low-cost computing device that is designed for students, saying his department had started talks with global manufacturers to start mass production.
"We have reached a (developmental) stage that today, the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35, including memory, display, everything," he told a news conference.
He said the touchscreen gadget was packed with Internet browsers, PDF reader and video conferencing facilities but its hardware was created with sufficient flexibility to incorporate new components according to user requirement.
Sibal said the Linux based computing device was expected to be introduced to higher education institutions from 2011 but the aim was to drop the price further to $20 and ultimately to $10.
The device was developed by research teams at India's premier technological institutes, the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science.
India spends about three percent of its annual budget on school education and has improved its literacy rates to over 64 percent of its 1.2 billion population but studies have shown many students can barely read or write and most state-run schools have inadequate facilities.
I'll be watching this, rather interesting. MIT was trying to develop a $12 computer for awhile.
The third world is ahead of the U.S. market in this instance but still mobile computing devices are on the increase and are expected to surpass desktop, laptop and netbook sales in five years.
As a case in point, my niece has a Blackberry Curve and a data plan. She doesn't own a computer and for the most part doesn't even need one for college. She does it all off the Blackberry.
Symbian is very capable in this regard: Some geologist is bound to dig up a Nokia phone a few thousands years from now, turn it on, and it'll light right up.
But our biggest problem in the U.S. anyway is infrastructure. The squeal baits running their mouths from Telecom marketing have tried to feed basic users misinformation about text messaging (they used to say what a load that was on their systems), and now data capping. Text messaging is actually cheaper to maintain than voice because the signal for it is so incredibly low. Ask anyone with no bars trapped in Haiti who was rescued in part due to SMS.
Data capping? The load is really not the amount but the width of the hose. You can get the same amount of water through a straw as you can through a firehose, it just takes longer. But Squeal Baits in marketing for telecom who can't download anything by themselves unless either someone shows them how, or it's an iPhone, don't know the difference between data in bits and bits per second. Once that is finally figured out like we see now with better text messaging plans, it's gonna be the smart computing devices all the way.
Consider what you pay for your cable or DSL bill. Now, eliminate that, instead buy a sexy but competent device with plenty of horsepower and absent Winblows Mobile and pay for an expensive data plan, see if even with the telecoms squawkin' you don't come in cheaper.
Now if you do like I do for a living and you actually need computers since you develop on them, well join the club we're SOL. However if all you do is read, write, surf the Internet, go to school, maintain records on cloud-based systems maybe work in HR or something similar, a good smart device and a data plan will do ya.
The biggest killer on data plans is watching movies and other streaming video. Here again, it's not the per datum, it's how much at one time, aka you're takin' up a ton of room in the proverbial hose.
Just my thoughts, rambling though they may be.