$10 laptop made in india coming to a location near you soon

[0ni0n]

NEW DELHI: A $10 laptop (Rs 500) prototype, with 2 GB RAM capacity, would be on display in Tirupati on February 3 when the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Techology is launched.

The $10 laptop project, first reported in TOI three years ago, has come as an answer to the $100 laptop of MIT's Nicholas Negroponte that he was trying to hardsell to India. The $10 laptop has come out of the drawing board stage due to work put in by students of Vellore Institute of Technology, scientists in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, IIT-Madras and involvement of PSUs like Semiconductor Complex. “At this stage, the price is working out to be $20 but with mass production it is bound to come down,” R P Agarwal, secretary, higher education said.

Apart from questioning the technology of $100 laptops, the main reason for HRD ministry's resistance to Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project was the high and the hidden cost that worked out to be $200.

The mission launch would also see demonstration of e-classroom, virtual laboratory and a better 'Sakshat' portal that was launched more than two years ago. Sources also said that the ministry has entered into an agreement with four publishers — Macmillan, Tata McGraw Hill, Prentice-Hall and Vikas Publishing — to upload their textbooks on 'Sakshat'. Five per cent of these books can be accessed free.

The mission, with an 11th plan outlay of Rs 4,612 crore, is aimed at making a serious intervention in enhancing the Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education. The mission has two major components. One, content generation through its portal 'Sakshat', and two, building connectivity along with providing access devices for institutions and learners.

In this context, government would give Rs 2.5 lakh per institution for 10 Kbps connection and subsidise 25% of costs for private and state government colleges.

The mission would seek to extend computer infrastructure and connectivity to over 18,000 colleges in the country, including each department of nearly 400 universities and institutions of national importance. The mission would focus on appropriate e-learning procedures, providing facility of performing experiments through virtual laboratories, online testing and certification, online availability of teachers to guide and mentor learners, and utilization of EduSat and DTH.

Rs 500 laptop display on Feb 3-India-The Times of India

[Fhqwghads]

Not impressed. Here's a $5 laptop. They've been around for thousands of years.

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/2145/boulier1tx2.jpg

[Dimmauk]

Rs 500 laptop display on Feb 3-India-The Times of India

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[Mayareira]

Meh, I only use Apple products and watch french movies.

[Khamsin]

But an abacas can only do math, you can't do much cool stuff with it.

It is neat that they can actually manufacture a laptop that cheaply. I'll be interested to see the benchmark numbers for it, and whether it can handle the newest games at decent levels of performance.

I imagine the price doesn't include the OS or any other software, though?

[Skjie]

Linux and Open Office, you mean?

[0ni0n]

But an abacas can only do math, you can't do much cool stuff with it.

It is neat that they can actually manufacture a laptop that cheaply. I'll be interested to see the benchmark numbers for it, and whether it can handle the newest games at decent levels of performance.

I imagine the price doesn't include the OS or any other software, though?

Actual the more information I find out about the laptop, the more doubtful it seems to be that it is financially plausible. I mean, you can get all the software for free, but what about processor and ram? assuming there's no HD, but flash memory. Those two parts alone will cost around $35~$50.

[Kaisha]

Where the heck are they getting all the penny-an-hour labour workers to get the cost down so low, ignoring the price of the parts themselves?

I can't picture these things working longer than a month reliably if they have to use parts cheap enough to get it down to the $20 point.
(why am I thinking that these things are going to sport small displays that display 4 shades of black?)

[Senji]

Where the heck are they getting all the penny-an-hour labour workers to get the cost down so low, ignoring the price of the parts themselves?

I can't picture these things working longer than a month reliably if they have to use parts cheap enough to get it down to the $20 point.
(why am I thinking that these things are going to sport small displays that display 4 shades of black?)

India.

It will prolly just be an original Gameboy with a keyboard.

Here's the $100 one

Which you can see how they cut costs, but it still pretty badass. I scrolled it back and forth a hundred times, but maybe I just like transformers too much.

[Skjie]

The OLPC is really neat, but you could definitely cut corners on it to get it cheaper.

[Hank]

But can it play Crysis?

[archibaldcrane]

I wish I had a badass last name like "Negroponte".