India Officially Launches Simputer 197
aravind writes "The Communications and IT Minister, Pramod Mahajan, has launched India's indigenously developed low-cost handheld Personal Computer -- Simputer -- at an IT and Communication expo, SMAU 2002, in Milan. A low-cost handheld PC on GNU/Linux working through a browser for international markup language IML, priced at Rs9000 (less than $200). 200Mhz StrongArm processor, 32MB DRAM, 24 MB flash, touchscreen, speakers, USB, text-to-speech, MP3 capability ... " Look here for some of the previous stories we've run on the Simputer.
Average montly salaries (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Average montly salaries (Score:2, Informative)
I suppose the government will have to fund it, at least partially. However, the impact apparently wouldn't be that great, since it is designed to be shared by a community [simputer.org]
.A few things about India (Score:5, Informative)
Second, India has huge potential in IT as their materials-poor economy has encouraged education in mathematics and other subjects which do not require expensive learning facilities - you do not actually need a computer to learn computer science, but it sure helps.
Third, India cannot afford lots of imports from the US, Korea or Japan. They need to be self-sufficient (even if it wasn't one of Gandhi's principles).
Fourth, the demand for such things is enormous. Believe me, I once thought I was going to find myself in prison in Mumbai because I had an HP calculator and a mini circuit tester in my luggage ("Admit, you have brought these to sell on black market")
Fifth, even poor Indian villages have the odd educated person who will provide services for the locals - and such people would benefit enormously from a handheld. The idea that every peasant should ultimately have a compactflash/smartmedia card with all their own information on it, is actually a hugely enabling one in a subliterate culture because it allows them access to a personal store of information. If it has to be retrieved by symbols on a soft keyboard and text-to-speech, does it matter?
Unfortunately, looking at some earlier posts, India and China are far from having a monopoly on illiterate peasants who don't know what goes on in the rest of the world (flamebait)
A couple things (Score:5, Informative)
Second: The product is not shipping, it was just presented by the IT Minister of India. No shipping date has been set by any company. Aparently the people at simputer.org do not build the product, they licence the hardware to be built. There are no listed manufacturers of the simputer.
It is not shipping, it is not available. (But according to the FAQ, it should be shipping by March 2002!) All said, the hinduonnet article is simple marketing fluff (ala M$, RH, etc).
---gralem
Re:Cheap, but is it enough? (Score:4, Informative)
IAANLPR - I Am An Natural Language Processing Researcher
Ok, although India does have so many different languages, the majority of the people speak a countable few, maybe with subtle differences in dialects. In fact, only about 14 languages are recognized as official languages of India, and almost everybody can speak two or more Indian languages.
So, although the total figure may seem big, using just one language like Hindi would cover significant percent of the populace.
Also, there _is_ a lot of similarity between a lot of the languages, both in the written and the spoken forms. So developing a general prototype system and then expanding on it regionwise would not be as mammoth a task as it may seem.
For example, a lot of the South Indian languages sound similar, have similar sounding alphabets, with a few differences in grammar. The basic difference would come in smaller parts of the language set and may need certain prefixed lexicon modifications.
If these things are going to be custom built for each of these states, then I'm guessing that you'd have a system that is custom-built to the languages of that region.
It may take a while longer and maybe a little tedious, but I suppose that would be just worth the trouble, especially after having come this far.
Re:Average montly salaries (Score:2, Informative)
BTW in India a PC is about Rs. 30000
Re:MP3? (Score:2, Informative)
Ogg Vorbis was ported to Sharp's Zaurus [linuxdevices.com] earlier this year. It has a 200MHz StrongArm processor too, so I don't see why they can't do the same with Simputer. I would love to have an inexpensive Ogg-capable handheld ^_^
If you wanna buy one... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cheap, but is it enough? (Score:5, Informative)
Not to karma-whore, but just a few additions/corrections (I had posted earlier [slashdot.org] on the scripts; now including stuff on grammar as well here) :-
Bottomline: I'm an NLP researcher myself fascinated by languages (see my sig). As much as I'm excited by this project, I really think we shouldn't kid ourselves, coz:-
The lady on the simputer screen (Score:3, Informative)
In case u guyz are wondering who is the female on the screen of the simputer
on simputer.org, well her name is Aishawarya [indianceleb.com]
Rai. Beautiful lady indeed. The link also has her phone number but try at ur
own risk. Here [aishwarya-rai.com] are some
nice pictures of her.
Simputer has a YAHOO GROUP !! (Score:1, Informative)
- Simputer Yahoo Group
at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/simputer/ [yahoo.com]Smartcard is $2, plus fees for access (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So where can I buy one? (Score:3, Informative)
Not for general sale yet, but you might convince them to let you have an Evaluation unit...