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Handhelds Software Hardware Linux

What Happened to Simputer? 248

Posted by CowboyNeal from the humble-beginnings dept.
An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices.com has published a brief update on the much-heralded Simputer, the Linux-based 'platform for social change' that was intended to bring inexpensive, easy-to-use computers to rural Indian villages. In the last 12 months, only about 4,000 units have been sold -- well below the planned 50,000+ units. Three Simputer models priced from $240 to $480 were introduced by PicoPeta one year ago, whereas the original goal was a maximum of $200. A cost-reduced redesign is reportedly in the works."
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What Happened to Simputer? More

What Happened to Simputer?

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  • Sad News (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @09:38PM (#12240876) Homepage
    My sympathy goes to them for failing twice [slashdot.org].

    I wonder if they did have market research to identify the need? You can't just build and hope they will come anymore.

    This reminds me of a joke where a group of settlers came to this island and gifted the chief some pet gold fish as a gesture of good faith, but the chief just ate all the them.
    • Yeah, seriously. Slashdot has lost it. Duplicates rue the day!
    • Is it just me or are more and more "what ever happened to..." articles appearing on /. for things that were basically vapourware (ie never existed). I recall an article a few days ago about what ever happened to "toothing"? /. - the ultimate "when I was a little boy..." club. Did I mention, when I was a little boy, we hand coded things with pencil and paper. Punch cards were revolutionary back then and memory was just a bunch of girls sitting in the back room flipping switches on and off...You kids today!!
    • Or the classic Onion headline that went something like: "African Tribesman Uses IBM Modem To Crush Nut"...

  • Again? (Score:5, Funny)

    by monkeySauce ( 562927 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @09:42PM (#12240908) Journal
    You mean after 11 days this thing has again [slashdot.org] failed to win over the Indian market?
    Maybe they should set slightly more long-term targets.

  • I'd rather have MIT's $100 Laptop (Score:5, Insightful)

    by davidwr ( 791652 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @09:45PM (#12240929) Homepage Journal
    Assuming I can wait that is.

    If I'm in the third world, I can probably wait.

  • What Happened to Simputer? (Score:3, Informative)

    by anomav ( 873830 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @09:45PM (#12240931)
    200 USD ~ 8600 Indian Rupees There is not money for some people even to feed themselves and heir children ... How would they buy computers ?
    • Yeah, as also you get much better Acer PDA's for much less than that, and very good smartphones for approximately the same price, but dont let that confuse you. Starving families are the reason why the Simputer has failed, just as they are the reason why we arent adding 2.5 million mobile users a month.
    • In my home country of the USA, there are many families that do not have enough money to feed themselves. Even so, companies which sell computers to Americans seem to do moderately well.

    • Re:What Happened to Simputer? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Omkar ( 618823 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:00PM (#12241015) Homepage Journal
      I believe the idea was that a whole village would purchase one together, or that some governing body would give them funds to do so. That way the village could have much easier access to information about market conditions, weather, etc. I'm not sure if the villagers ended up getting access to the Net after all (having lived in India for a while, I would guess not), but the Simputer project didn't fail because its cost was all that high. As I understand it, it failed because its competitors decreased their prices much more quickly than it could keep up.
      • "That way the village could have much easier access to information about market conditions, weather, etc"

        This is the justification I keep hearing. Have these people ever heard of a radio? Amazing invention, been around more than a century now.

        A basic AM/FM radio can be bought for $2.50 (44 Rupees), and gives you access to market conditions, news, weather, entertainment, and so on. A shortwave radio gives you access to international content for a few dollars more.

        I'm afraid I don't have a lot of sympat
    • How would they buy computers ?

      Maybe with some of that money the Indian government is saving by building an aircraft carrier.
    • Well firstly the model being followed is that at least every village will be able to buy one computer each to check the internet for the best crops to plant and the best time to harvest (high prices).

      Secondly there is hardly any area in India where there is systematic famine like in sub-saharan Africa. Sometimes due to droughts or floods temporary famine situations get created. The central government tries to provide aid in such situations asap.

      The image of starving Indian children is mostly canned footag
      • Can someone mod this parent down. The final comments on Space Travel are ridiculous. Of course we didn't go into space 50 years after the revolution, that was the early 1800s you dipshit. Let me guess, it took you less time after colonial rule to get the Internet. shock! How about HDTV, how long after colonial rule did it take you to get that, damn you beat us again.

        How about this for a measure wise guy. How long where you ruled by a colonial power? What took you so long? Come up, pull it together,
      • India has been free of colonial rule for 50 years and is already in space. It took the US 200 years after the end of colonial rule to reach space so definitely the pace of development is faster in India.

        Yeah, that makes sense. What the hell are you talking about?! The USA signed its declaration of independence in 1776. Airplanes hadn't been invented yet, space wasn't really in anyone's sights at the time. The pace of development in India compared to the USA has no relation to the speed at which each count

  • What's the deal? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Delphix ( 571159 ) * on Thursday April 14, 2005 @09:47PM (#12240938)
    What's the deal with these low cost computers over the last few years. First the simputer for poor rural farmers in India that only cost about a year's salary. And more recently the $100 laptop coming out of MIT.

    How about we really do something with technology to help these people? Like setting them up with running water, electricity, a house that doesn't leak? Maybe get them enough food or decent medical care... It seems like a waste to invest so much in giving out low cost computers to someone at risk of starving to death the next day or is at high risk of deadly illnesses.

    It's a nice goal to have everyone connected. But you have to ask "why?" Are we trying to find a new source of ideas to exploit? I don't see how hooking people up to the net is going to help them out when their basic needs aren't met...

    There's the education argument. I'm not sure whether these will provide more access to information. In certain areas it definitely will. But then what do you do with that education when you have no infrastructure to support it... I know it's slashdot and it's all about tech, but hwo about focusing on some tech that would really help people.

    • Re:What's the deal? (Score:5, Informative)

      by JoeMerchant ( 803320 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:11PM (#12241082)
      Well, for starters, if a poor village of 100 people can afford just one of these Simputers and a couple of info-CDs, they can have the equivalent of a small library, with reference material on construction, farming, basic medical care, etc.

      If this village can manage to sustain the cost of a 'net connection, they are now connected to the "World Brain" where they can access current information to address their needs - not a bad return for a $2.50 initial + $0.50/month per person investment.

      Maybe it's not as compelling as a diesel pump to bring up the well water, but it's about the same cost.

      • Way OT (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rathehun ( 818491 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @11:36PM (#12241513) Homepage
        i was a volunteer for the last three months with Oxfam India, in Cuddalore, one of the affected districts of South India.


        As part of our rehabilitation efforts, we set up Information Centres, using $700 laptops donated by IBM and CDMA based wireless telephones.


        These Information Centres contained a large amount of daily updated information - News, Commodity and Vegetable prices, weather information and forecasts, fish prices, government schemes and subsidies that people were eligible for...


        We trained local village women to use these machines - aside:our information centre was coded with XUL and therefore, Firefox, hehe - and they earned a small amount of money from printing out say - a governemnt subsidy application form.


        Now - and here is where I get to the actual crux of my arguemnet, the price of technology is not the only limiting factor. Just because something costs less than $200 doesn't mean that people WILL buy it. The content - or the usefuleness of the software will ultimately be the driving force behind its adoption. Once people saw that our product was actually useful, they actually raised nearly half the cost of another machine so that there queries could be dealt with faster!


        Otherwise you're just giving them an expensive solitare toy.

      • they can have the equivalent of a small library

        It would be useless on a small screen. Much better to have a bunch of books, at least you can share them easier.

        With regard to sharing, there is that theory that 100 poor people will buy one Simputer. However each will quickly realize that -he- can have it only for three days per year, on average - and so he can easily see it as an unwise choice. And what if/when it gets damaged or lost? Will -my- investment be ruined by that rabble? That's the question. I

        • Maybe, maybe not. Books are great, so long as they are up to date. A book on atomic energy from 1950 is only useful if you are historian - I have someplace in my personal library such a book, but I wouldn't want a poor person to read it, because while interesting there is too much that we have no learned isn't correct. Web sites can at least be updated.

          Hook that computer to the internet can you get things like newsgroups. Places where you can ask questions and get answers latter. You can ask questi

    • "Like setting them up with running water, electricity, a house that doesn't leak?"

      Err, how is an electronics organization outside of the country in question supposed to provide water, electricity, or a house that doesn't leak?

    • Re:What's the deal? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:20PM (#12241134) Homepage Journal
      We've had this discussion on Slashdot any number of times, but it never seems to register. I'll try once more.

      Yes, most people in India can't afford to buy gadgets. That doesn't mean they can't use them. This is happening already in India and elsewhere in South Asia. The gadget -- a cell phone, a internet-capable computer, whatever -- is purchased by a entrepreneur who resells its use. Or by a group of locals who pool their resources. The gadget pays for itself because these people are desperately poor. They use it to sidestep middlemen so as to get better prices for their crops. Or to obtain weather reports off off the web, so they know the best and safest time to send their fishing boats out. Somebody has a sick cow, goes online for help, and a volunteer vet hundreds of miles away gives them advice.

      It's called the Leapfrog Effect. Developing countries don't have all the fancy resources we take for granted, and can't afford to reproduce every step we've taken. So they skip steps. They don't have landline telephones, but they do have cell towers and satellite uplinks. They don't have a decent mail system, but they do have internet access. They don't have newspapers (or the ability to read them), but they do have TV.

      That said, they're probably better served by off-the-shelf tech then by specially developed stuff like the Simputer. In theory, the Simputer is easier to use and maintain than a PC -- a major consideration when you're hundreds of miles from the nearest computer store. But that doesn't make up for the extra cost of developing and manufacturing that special gadget.

    • Re:What's the deal? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "starving to death the next day"
      Not all third world countries have people dying of starvation. Only some. In places like India, Indonesia, they may not have the best nutrition, but that is far away from dying of hunger.

      'high risk of deadly disease"
      This is why linking them up to technology helps. It allows doctors to reach rural villagers, teaching about how to prevent spread of certain types of disease, warning them of impending outbreaks, etc.

      "But then what do you do with that education when you have no

    • Re:What's the deal? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:23PM (#12241146) Homepage Journal
      How does a poor farmer who has a little spare land to grow a cash crop figure out what the most profitable choice would be?

      Where does a rural mother without ready access to health care find out how to prevent and recognize childhood diseases?

      Where does a community leader get information on how to deal with the problem of contaminated water supplies, and how to build emergency filtration systems?

      Clearly, information is an important even to poor people. It's not that information is more important than clean water -- that's not true even here in the US. But the marginal value of a dollar spent on information may in some cases be greater than the marginal value spent on all the important things you mention, especially if the technology can be made cheap enough.

      • Re:What's the deal? (Score:3, Informative)

        by toybuilder ( 161045 )
        Where do they get the information? From Indian initiatives like e-choupal... [echoupal.com]

        The country is gearing up to connect their rural masses. There's still a lot of groundwork being done, but they are definitely moving forward.

        • Here's a case study [worldbank.org]

          ITC eChoupal brings the power of scale to the small farmer, relevant and real-time information despite

          distances, and customized knowledge despite heterogeneity. As a result, farmers earn higher incomes
          through increased yields, better quality, and lower transaction costs. The increased efficiencies and
          improved crop quality contribute to making Indian agriculture more competitive.

          Free access to the Internet is also opening windows of rural India to the world at large. Many
          sanchalaks tra

        • http://www.echoupal.com/ [echoupal.com] needs to learn how to design a website. They have a huge animated picture that blocks out most of the text. Maybe, they didn't test it with Firefox?

          Firstly, the geek class needs to learn to make good websites (and other technology).

          Secondly, the rural masses must get connected.

          Anyone know a good website for Open Source Hardware (OSH)?

    • Re:What's the deal? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Quixote ( 154172 ) * on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:31PM (#12241182) Homepage Journal
      Sigh... once again: India is a big country, with a population of over a billion. Not everyone in India is running around in tattered clothes, hungry and starving to death.

      Even if 20% of the people can afford the Simputer, you are still looking at a market of over 200 million; a market roughly the size of the USA.

      Please, use some of your fancy 'Intarweb skilz' to learn more about that country. Learn about things like PPP (purchasing power parity) and the fact that India is a net exporter of food. Even if India didn't produce a single grain of food, their stocks would last 3 years. India is also the world's largest producer of dairy products.

      In general, thanks to the culture there, people can survive with the most minimal of resources. If cows can run around on the streets and eke out an existence, don't you think people can? And I'm talking about the worstcase scenario here.

      • Re:What's the deal? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Neopoleon ( 874543 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @12:01AM (#12241604) Homepage
        "India is a net exporter of food. Even if India didn't produce a single grain of food, their stocks would last 3 years."

        That doesn't mean a thing.

        The French are net exporters of soap, but how many of them actually get a chance to use it?
      • ... it was a product designed to be cheap cheap cheap.. ..yet it fails to be cheaper than competitors models. so then it would fail as a product, because people wouldn't buy it.

        "The Simputer is a low cost portable alternative to PCs, by which the benefits of IT can reach the common man.
        It has a special role in the third world because it ensures that illiteracy is no longer a barrier to handling a computer.
        The key to bridging the digital divide is to have shared devices that permit truly simple and natural

      • Name one country that doesn't claim to be a net exporter of food. You can't, because everyone claims that. I don't know where it all goes, because nobody is importing it, just exporting.

        There are political reasons that everyone wants to claim to export food. Some countries will export food while their own people starve.

    • "It's a nice goal to have everyone connected. But you have to ask 'why?'"

      This region of the world was recently devastated by a tsunami because there was no system in place to warn people. If everyone was connected, it would be much easier to warn these people.

      Yes, even starving people can utilize information. What good is food and water to a corpse?

    • For one thing, it gives their kids a chance to learn about the world, become educated, find a well-paying job in the city, and send money home regularly to support their parents.
    • Everytime such trolls post, I'm tempted to flame.

      Henceforth, there is a better idea - if this is the best you can come up with, I'd much rather not read any other posts from such folks.

      Better to foe ya'll and mark your comments -1 than bother reading such crap.

    • Education is tech .. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by torpor ( 458 )
      .. that really helps people.

      And if you've got a computer, you've got education.

      I find it frustrating that you can't understand this. You may not use your computer for very educative purposes, but for sure the unwashed masses know that, with a little reading and understanding, great things can happen.

      A text-file on how to dig a water well and maintain it, for example, is worth countless bytes. Cheap computers can offer information on how to treat disease, in a form that can be easily understood by many,

      • Actually knowing how to dig a waterwell may not be as useful as you think. Some of those areas have poison (arsenic?) in their ground water. The unsanitary shallow wells people have been using for years don't have it, while the sanitary deep wells do. At least with unsanitary wells the problem is things your immune system learns to fight off. (Mostly, I don't want to make the claim shallow wells are safe, just safer than deep wells in some areas)

        Of course this depends on what area of the world you are

        • I don't understand what you are talking about. Has it not occurred to you that, just perhaps, that snippet of information could be included? It is in fact a subset of the information "how to dig a water-well".
  • The first thought that comes to mind after viewing such an object is, "yet another gadget for the tech savvy." It's like those people who buy the Nokia 9500 (correct me if that model no. is incorrect) $1000 "super phones" or other such gadgets that are more "I have this, look how cool I am and also rich!"

    Will these gadgets really bring about a social change? I really don't believe so. Either way I look at it, I see these gadgets as doing little more or the same or even less than a Pocket PC, but inclu

  • Old story (Score:5, Informative)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @09:51PM (#12240967) Homepage Journal
    If you follow the links far enough, you find this story from 2003 [rediff.com] that makes it clear that the Simputer has been in trouble for a long time now. (Even before we first took notice of it on Slashdot!) The reason is simple: it costs almost as much as a low-end PC.

    This should be a familiar problem. You try to sell a cheaper system by stripping out features. But to get rid of those features, you have to tool up from scratch, and your system ends up costing more money than you save. That's what killed the legacy-free PC [computerworld.com.au], and a lot of other stuff.

    • Erg, throw out PCI for USB?! Who in their right mind would do that?

      Now, if they replaced the BIOS with something like OF (OpenFirmware) or LinuxBIOS, then you can start talking about legacy free.

      Also, getting the motherboards to actually follow the specs for ACPI, APIC and etc. (or at least test with Linux and the BSDs) then we'd be getting somewhere.
      • Erg, throw out PCI for USB?! Who in their right mind would do that?
        Somebody who doesn't use PCI cards? Most users don't.
        • They might not realize it, but someone who knows might put a card in that they need.

          Also, it's funny that we're going back to SCSI based peripherals(IE, USB, IEEE 1394/FireWire), though with different electrical signaling.
          • They might not realize it, but someone who knows might put a card in that they need.

            Like what? The only card a normal user is likely to ever have a use for is a fast video card for games, and PCI is no use for that. Everything else they migh conceavably need even for quite exotic uses, from gigabit networking to a raid controller, is likely to be built into the motherboard these days.

            • While some video cards to include video capture cards, a friend of mine didn't have one in his system, and he wanted to convert much of his VHS tapes into DVDs.

              So we went to Frys because he didn't want to put it off any longer. There were a few USB models, but he didn't want the extra cables the external device would require.

              I ended up picking a huppage card, and didn't know it at the time, but luckily it already has a Linux driver project in development. I haven't checked, but I do not think there woul

      • Re:Old story (Score:3, Insightful)

        by R.Caley ( 126968 )
        Erg, throw out PCI for USB?! Who in their right mind would do that?

        How many times have you fitted PCI cards in your laptop?

        I just installed a fanless firewall machine with no internal expansion slots, but 4 usb ports.

        My Zarus talks USB, but I have no idea why I might want a PCI slot in it.

  • Alternatives have more attractive free software (Score:5, Interesting)

    by atomic noodle ( 814905 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @09:52PM (#12240974)
    Linux-based systems like the Simputer have a problem competing against Windows/x86 machines in third world markets. The problem is that Windows-compatible software is effectively free, due to piracy. And, even if it isn't strongly marketed locally, that software is made more attractive by all the money spent promoting it elsewhere. (And, this is a dupe, too. The Linux Devices story even links to the same AP article as the original Slashdot posting.)
    • Having actually used the Simputer - one of the hardware engineers is a good friend - I must say that the device itself is quite cool. I also own a Palm Tree 6500, and even when compared to that, it is quite an interesting machine.

      One of the coolest features is the decent handwriting recognition software - it also works for I think, at last count, 6 Indian languages. The otehr cool thing is the interface. Clean. Sweet. Just Works (tm).

      Seriously. This is IMHO, the biggest cool thing about this machine. Ev

  • $100? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Paris The Pirate ( 799954 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @09:55PM (#12240991) Homepage

    For a about $50 you could get a 486 laptop with a distro of some for of *nix on it. Hell, enterprise chuck out laptop's all the time. Why doesn't someone just recondition them and then palm them off to India at cost if they really wanna help people out there?

    Seriously, $100... why, when you could probably organise computers for India for free with a little international logistics and som..... wait...

    Actually scratch all that I just remembered we are capitalists. Silly me.

    • Re:$100? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by grcumb ( 781340 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:17PM (#12241118) Homepage Journal

      "Seriously, $100... why, when you could probably organise computers for India for free with a little international logistics and som..... wait..."

      "Actually scratch all that I just remembered we are capitalists. Silly me."

      Oh boy, does that ever strike a chord for me. I just ranted [livejournal.com] about how hard it is to get decent equipment in the developing world last weekend.

      Honestly, the big problem is not whether people would actually buy such a device, but how they would go about buying one. You see, shopping online is not an option if you're not online(!). Nor are there handy factory outlet stores in the places where these things are most useful. Governments do some things very well; one of those things is business and/or technology development. They generally don't know jack****, however, about little details like sales channels and marketing.

      If I could get in touch with a supplier of these (or any similar competing device), I'd order a dozen right now. I'd easily be able to sell them on my next trip into the villages.

      • Re:$100? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by kabz ( 770151 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @11:11PM (#12241389) Homepage Journal
        If it would be so easy to sell these in the villages, then why aren't enterprising people selling Visors, Palms, and equivalently powerful, web and communication oriented small form factor PCs to India already ?

        This really is a serious question. A Palm V will do dialup, and more modern and now cheaper devices do WiFi, BlueTooth, ethernet.

        Why did they need the Simputer, when there are already similar devices that would work ?

        • Re:$100? (Score:3, Informative)

          by grcumb ( 781340 )

          The big selling point of the Simputer is its ruggedness. I can tell you from experience that the death rate in the tropics for standard office technology is extremely high.

  • Heres a reason why... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Simputer folks designed some really cool software for use with low-horsepower machines where people use a wide variety of languages and alphabets and village-appropriate applications. It was cool stuff, and apparently they were better at that than they were at hardware design. Sounds like it's a good time for them to recognize what they're good at and what they're not good at, and port the software to newer commercial PDA platforms and/or open it so other people can port it.

    I can't tell if that $199 De

  • hey, look at this! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Punto ( 100573 )
    it's my totally insightful comment on this same story from last week: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=144848&cid=121 31116 [slashdot.org]

  • Quite Surprising really (Score:5, Funny)

    by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:03PM (#12241036) Homepage Journal
    Practically impossible to imagine that the impoverished and illiterate of India wouldn't be lining up in droves to fork over years worth of wages for something as technologically underwhelming as the simputer.

    It's a shame really, I nearly cry at the loss of productivity they never realized by using spreadsheets to better manage their goat hearding.

  • I'm not surprised.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:04PM (#12241042)
    I'm really not surprised this wasn't a success. A lot of companies blindly go after "emerging markets" without really understanding them. In particular, price isn't as big of a deal as some people think it is. For example, people vastly underestimate the buying power of people in India. Even if everyone was able to afford a computer, what would they do with them? They have no training, no experience, and no support infrastructure.

    Interestingly enough, there are some business models that work well. Take the "village PC" model. One person in the village buys a computer (possibly with village assets), supports it, rents out time on it, etc. Everyone in the village, regardless of their technical expertise, benefits from the technology. This model has also worked well for mobile phones.

    Last quarter, there were two good talks on technology for emerging and "invisible" markets here at the University of Washington. The first is a talk by Eric Brewer (UC Berkeley) entitled The Case for Technology for Developing Regions. An abstract, video, and MP3 of the talk are available from that site. The other talk was given by John Sherry of Intel's People and Practices Research Group. PowerPoint slides, an abstract, a suggested reading list, a discussion wiki, and more. I highly encourage you to check these talks out.

  • Ass-Backwards Economics... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RexRhino ( 769423 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:35PM (#12241214)
    OK, let me explain something.

    When a product is first developed, that research and development cost, tooling costs, etc., need to be recouped. It is passed on to the consumers when a product is new. After a product has been on the market and recoups those costs, they prices start going down.

    In effect, those rich geeks who buy all the fancy toys before everyone else subsidize the development for us poor geeks who purchase the product a few years later for next to nothing.

    Making a computer especially for poor people makes no sense. Everyone knows that the killer PDAs of today will be available as $50 knockoffs from China in 2 or 3 years. I have seen old Palm PDAs people were trying to get rid of for $10-$15 bucks.

  • This box has some interesting things in it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:39PM (#12241236) Homepage Journal
    For one thing it has both USB host and device ports. I haven't seen anything else in the small mobile space that has host ports.

    It's very powerful for $200. Granted the screen at that price is monochrome, so it will never be an executvie toy, but there are similar mono devices for industrial apps by companies like Symbol. I could see it used in the same kinds of applications.

  • ObFuturama (Score:4, Funny)

    by Saint Stephen ( 19450 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:51PM (#12241288) Homepage Journal
    I think it was replaced by Femputer.
  • Companies spend zillions of dollars/rupies/litas/euros making us want whatever they have to sell. I doubt that many people anywhere would lust after a cheap "simcar for people who can't afford real cars." No. We'd eagerly thumb through magazine reviews of machines we couldn't afford, and dream of the day we could bring a shiny, new "real" computer home.

    In a way, the Simputer fiasco highlights the death of revolutionary progress. Remember the cool and affordable platforms from the past? (Amiga 500, Sincla

  • Can't make 'em cheaper? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by crottsma ( 859162 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:55PM (#12241307)
    Fry's Electronics (electronic store chain based in California) has been making wonderfully crappy 199.00 dollar computers for years! They run Linux, and are cost-efficient in every respect. Are these other people aiming for a massive profit margin, or are they just unable to replicate the technical efficiency of the local computer-monger?

  • The whole concept is misguided. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by j741 ( 788258 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @11:01PM (#12241340) Journal
    Of course it was destined to fail. How can anyone expect verry low-income households, no matter where they are located, to purchase something for which they do not have a need? A computer is a luxury, not a need. It's a tool which enables more complex informational tasks. Those with verry low-income households typically only need simple informational tasks such as word-of-mouth, basic telephone communications, and basic news delivery (currently via radio, newspaper, or TV). Other than providing an alternative method for these tasks, what does a simple computer provide?

    And what about longevity and stability? Let's face it, a 20 or 30 year old car can still be useful if it works, but a 4 year old computer is almost useless even for today's simplest computing tasks. Just look at how much the computer industry and social utiliziation has changed in the past few years as related to internet access alone; Broadband, VOIP, P2P, streaming video, these things are still in a massive state of fluctuation as they experience 'growing pains'. Until the 'evolution' of the computer and the way it is used matures and stabilises the appeal of it to those with very few resources is almost non-existant.
  • PicoPeta launched the first retail versions of the Simputer last April, describing it as a Linux-based "platform for social change" that could inexpensively bring easy-to-use computers to rural Indian villages. Three models were introduced, priced from $240 to $480.

    Given an average per capita income of about $3,000.00 in India, it isn't surprising that a $240 box is still looking expensive--that's a month's income. However, given that China and India are making friends in IT it isn't going to be long b

  • Why would they want a Simputer, when they could get a second hand Pentium box for half the price?

  • It would be better (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Relyt ( 96115 ) on Friday April 15, 2005 @12:08AM (#12241642)
    It would be better if people would just donate unused computers to these countries. I'm sure the libraries and educational institutions would appreciate them, and they would be free.

    Is there a charity that does this?
    • This has been discussed before. Some objections were that it takes alot of work to make sure the systems actually work and the enormous variety of the hardware makes it very complicated. I do think it could be done on a small scale.
  • The simputer has been battle hardned and is currently under trial by the Indian Army as a tactical battlefield computer. It goes by the name SATHI (an acronym). The idea is to have each field unit networked through this device for battle management. Like all things tech, its defence which foots the cost of innovation.
  • If you are going to publicise a price target, don't pick a currency which is collapsing. If hey had stated their target price in Euors, for instance, I think that the echange rate changes would more or less covered the drif up from $200 to $240.

  • Simputer! (Score:2, Funny)

    by DJPenguin ( 17736 )
    Simbot: I disguised myself as a Simputer so I could rule the Indians.

    Bender: But why?

    Simbot: Why? Why? I came here from a faraway planet ruled by a chavinistic Manputer that was really a Manbot. Have you any idea how it feels to be a Simbot living in a Manbot's Manputer's world?
  • Does ANYBODY ANYWHERE really want to work with a palmtop?

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