India Hopes to Make $10 Laptops a Reality 311
sas-dot writes "We all know Nicholas Negroponte's $100 OLPC. India, which was a potential market, rejected it. India's Human Resources Development ministry's idea to make laptops at $10 is firmly taking shape with two designs already in and public sector undertaking Semiconductor Complex evincing interest to be a part of the project. So far, the cost of one laptop, after factoring in labor charges, is coming to $47 but the ministry feels the price will come down dramatically considering the fact that the demand would be for one million laptops."
I must be living in a story book.. (Score:5, Funny)
What a strange time we live in.
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Re:I must be living in a story book.. (Score:5, Funny)
The article doesn't actually say it will be a computer. Maybe it's just a slab of wood or something.
Re:I must be living in a story book.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Hmm, wait, didn't put Google put out a patent for human-assisted functional computing? Never mind, this new computer will never work.
Re:I must be living in a story book.. (Score:4, Funny)
"Listen, am I the only one getting splinters from the keyboard here?"
"It can't be that cheap"
"Damn, they took my kidney!!"
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Re:I must be living in a story book.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Still though, if they are open minded with this thing, $10 *might* be acheivable. I'm talking about going with a non-x86 chip; whatever cheapo processor they can find. Believe me, once upon a time I surfed the web, checked email, wrote papers, and generated spreadsheets just fine on a 486 25mhz and 4MB of ram - using a full GUI. Previous to that the Amiga's and other computers were doing the same on less hardware than that.
Custom code the OS (in assembler if you have to), realize that you're targeting people who have never used a computer and as such they won't find it "too slow", and you can do some amazing things on hardware that would be considered "obsolete" by our spoiled populace. As a matter of fact, give it a cheap, low-res mono-LCD display (kinda like a graphing calculator but a bit larger - at least 8") and put a text-based OS on there. Still give it networking, and put Lynx and Mutt on there. I guarantee kids will learn from it and be grateful.
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This is more than a CPU issue. CPU, Ram, storage, motherboard, some kind of screen, keyboard and input device all cost $$$$. I don't believe for a second they can build a "laptop" for $10. Can you even buy a keyboard for $10? I'm talking new here, they can't build a m
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Re:I must be living in a story book.. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Made in Japan" didn't mean much for quality right after WW2 either, you know. Look at them now. That doesn't mean India is going to pull it off, but sure as hell they should try, and that would be FAR more helpful for poor indian kids and their families than the laptops themselves.
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Re:I must be living in a story book.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Having kids get cheap PCs is great, but not nearly as much as having them produced in your own country, where many kids will benefit from the laptops, and many many other will benefit from their parent's jobs required to build them , etc.
Now, about the confidence in government.. well, that's a constant in 3rd world countries.. don't think for a second that I doubt my country's government is any different. However, one can't just say "they're all thieves and that's that". Sometimes (maybe in cases like this one) their interests run parallel to those of the people (win-win), and that can be encouraged, aside from obviously trying to actually do something, anything you can, no matter how little it is, to improve the situation.
Some of my friends ran off to europe or the us during the 2001 crisis to get better jobs, or to 'save' themselves. I've been offered jobs in europe and the us, but I didn't want to take them, because I didn't want to live better in another country, I want to be able to live better in THIS one.
Re:I must be living in a story book.. (Score:4, Funny)
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Outsourcing to India (Score:2, Funny)
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Moreover even evil capitalists like at least the idea of doing good.
I don't find it at all surprising that there'd be competition to address this need. I find it somewhat surprising that it took so long.
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Hey everybody, let's all pool our money and buy a cape for Capt'n Obvious over here.
Re:I must be living in a story book.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can actually measure this. (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, Bolivia leads the "richest 10%/poorest 10% ratio" category, at 168.1:1 (USA: 15.9:1); Sierra Leone leads "richest 20%/poorest 20% ratio" at 57
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On the issue being discussed, wealth inequality, that's debatable—it might be true if your standards for "pretty good" are really generous. Considering only the three countries being discussed in this strand of the conversation, the United States is significantly worse than India by most measures of inequality (richest 10%:poorest 10%, richest 20%:poorest 20%, Gini index, etc.), though also much better than Brazil by the same measures. Th
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Once you've lived in countries with truly poor people, you stop thinking of people here as "poor". I know people living on WIC, medicaid, housing assistance, utility assistance, tuition assistance, and more. And they live as well as the middle to upper-middle class in many other countries
Education, or consumption? (Score:2)
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Interestingly, you didn't comment on the laptop != education part at all.
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Bank is from Bangladesh, not India!!!
Well, Grameen "has been working for over six years to support the microfinance sector in India" [grameenfoundation.org]". Of course you're right, though, that it is based in Bangladesh, and AFAI now R the prize was primarily won for their efforts there. My mistake.
I'm citing what I kept in mind from going through lots of reports and discussions after Yunus being awarded. Even though most of the reports were overall praising, some of them showed some details about what the microcredit business is about. Yunus himself, BTW, pointed
We have $47, do I hear $45 (Score:2)
going twice
Sold to the Redmond bidder
Coming to an advertisement near you soon...
Buy Windows Vista Pro Ultra Gold Genuine Advantage Home Platinum edition and get a free computer...
hmmm (Score:4, Funny)
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side note: (Score:5, Interesting)
With these gov't subsidized deals, though, I'm hopeful.
It should help out by decreasing replacement costs (swap the main unit OR the screen, not both).
Meanwhile, I can't wait to see these Indian cheapies on eBay!
hanzie.
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There may or may not be as subsidy (I only scanned TFA for tech specs), but a subsidy can change the cost. The government could subsidize the labor, material, or basically any other input that goes into production of this laptop. The govt lets the manufacturer use a factory for $1 a month == subsidy == reduction of cost.
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You know what else really helps that? Having standard-sized screens. Up until recently, laptop LCDs were many different sizes.
While most of the smaller sizes come in various settings, the biggest - 17" and 15.4" are both pretty much one size. You don't get manufacturers making 16.7", etc.
And whenever something like that happens, parts start becoming standardized. And they are.
In two years there probably will be lots of places to buy generic replacement LCD s
10 dollar laptop, eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
I bought a TI extensa for $25 and it's 100 MHz with 8 MB RAM and it lasted me through high school, and part of college (the DC jack broke and my wireless PC card broke too
If they could make this low cost laptop like the TI Extensa 710 (with a faster clock and more RAM of course) I think we'd find a low-cost solution. Perhaps some old technology chips could be made again for a low cost.
At this current rate... (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, China's gotta do something with that 1 trillion+ $USD in the bank.
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As Gillette said.. (Score:2)
No info to be found... (Score:5, Interesting)
If all you want is an digital text reader and work processor, yeah, you can do it for $10, easily enough. It's not going to compete in the same league as the OLPC, though.
Adding a color screen drives prices through the roof. Adding wifi will be more expensive. Adding USB and a decent amount of Flash storage will make it more expensive... etc.
I've argued several times before that the OLPC could do it's job just fine with far lower spec than even what it originally had, but I doubt they've got it right this time, at a price of just $10, and I'm extremely sure a device that cheap can't reasonably even be called a "Laptop" to begin with.
Re:No info to be found... (Score:4, Insightful)
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They could probably (re)start producing the Osaris in India, and turn out such a (damn good) system for around $10.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaris [wikipedia.org]
(I got mine for $50, about 5 years ago)
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Another option is to build something like the Newton eMate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMate [wikipedia.org]
There were also some company building a greyscale PalmOS device with a full keyboard attached to it... but I can't remember the name.
Palm w/ keyboard (was Re:No info to be found...) (Score:2)
>There were also some company building a greyscale PalmOS device
>with a full keyboard attached to it... but I can't remember the name.
That'd probably be the Dana AlphaSmart:
http://www.alphasmart.com/ [alphasmart.com]
William
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Do you live in a mud-hut in one of the most impoverished areas of India? Since you're posting to /. I'd guess not... So what YOU think you need has nothing to do with this device.
If you had no other way to communicate with the outside world, you'd damn sure want wireless mesh networking of some kind on your machine. If you want to use your laptop as a digital device for sampling data in experiments, or controlling electronics, you'd certainly want things like USB por
Remember Simputer (Score:5, Interesting)
Avery body here is aware of a project called Simputer, that was being run by IISc, Bangalore some 5 years ago. That project also had aim of providing computer at about Rs 5000 (@100 USD at rough rate of 50 Rs/USD). It turned out to be a huge failure.
This seems to be another vapour ware project, whose main aim is to extract government money. A present even simple mouse costs more than Rs. 500.
There is a saying in Sanskrit vachanesu kim dardratam . Why should you act as poor if only thing you have to do is to make promise. You can promise Rs 5.0 laptop, if you know that nobody is going to held you accountable at end of 5 year project and spending million dollar, and delivering nothing.
GoplaUS Education!!! (Score:5, Funny)
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This does not mean IITs don't do any good. IITs do good research, but as every "hip" place where people think the
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This not a vapour ware, government understand technology, Indian government - twice more!
This a photo of top notch laptop:
$10 Laptop Top Quality, Future Reality [dansdata.com]
Scientists say, just $10, just attach to monitor, take anywhere. We're smart, not paying $100.
Peace!
Just Dollar arbitrage (Score:5, Interesting)
What is it made of? (Score:2, Funny)
400 LEDs (Score:2)
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completely impossible (Score:5, Interesting)
If they're ever going to create something that goes below the $20 it would be amazing enough, but even then it would be a (technological) marginal device and completely out of the league with even the OLPC. Maybe some sort of ultra-cheap non-expandable motherboard with an integrated 386-like CPU, a solid-state HD of 128MB and with a 3 inch screen, or something, just to run a simplified Word application and a lynx-based browser.
Re:completely impossible (Score:4, Interesting)
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No kidding. The XO (i.e., the "hundred-dollar laptop") genuinely qualifies as a laptop, but this could only be described as a "pocket organizer" or "PDA" at best.
Not Today (Score:3, Informative)
Several year later it managed to provide prototypes at ~150$ ea.
If you followed the link from TFA to "India" on-line newspaper, you got those informations
- Their planning to creat some home made special-purpose design, instead of replicating OLPC work.
Just like this helped the OLPC going from a typical Dell or PowerBook price range to something cheaper using some specially built technology, the Indian project initiator hope to create s
OLPC (Score:3, Insightful)
Not true, at least not by people knowing something of IT/computers. By the time they proposed their OLPC project, there were already desktops on the market selling at $199 with better specifications (and a HD of 30GB) - though without screen, granted, but a 7,5 inch screen is not very expensive. It is fully in the realm of the possible to create a laptop with less good specifications for $145, and indeed, with mass-production even just
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heh (Score:2)
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- That would involve a completely new production method based on dirt-cheap (e.g. paper) materials, and being ready for mass production, which is unlikely to happen within two years time. Especially since it would have to work together with mainstream (recycled) electronics.
- That paper-made device would not be new (see the recycled stuff) nor have any of the specifications needed to call it a laptop (rechargable batteries?). What you're describing is rather a second-hand, papier-maché thin
$10 Laptop? (Score:4, Funny)
As an Indian IT person, (Score:5, Informative)
a) The ministry in question has never ever (to my knowledge) developed anything that can even remotely be called technological hardware.
b) The CPU, the RAM and many of the other components will have to be imported because India doesn't have a single factory that makes them.
c) Is it even remotely possible to buy in bulk a laptop-grade battery for $10 ? My low-end cellphone battery costs (retail) more.
d) What will the machine boot from ? a hard drive ? Flash? SSD?
e) IF a laptop is being designed for India, it will have to support Indic languages. And as someone who works in Indic computing, the best input methods/rendering backends involve QT, GTK or MS. (Despite working on the wretched problem for years and years and spending crores of the taxpayer's money, there's still no reliable input method for entering Devanagari text on the 80x25 console.) MS is out because there's no way you can build an x86 based or WinCE based machine for $10. Maybe some ARM+Linux based machines could run QT/GTK. But, again, $10 seems awfully low.
*sigh*
Aniruddha Shankar
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Let me open by saying that I think that there is basically no chance of it even happening, let alone coming in under $40 or so (production cost). But I will respond to your points anyway;
I doubt they were planning to build it themselves.
Why not increase the price to $85? (Score:2)
Wow, a $10 laptop (Score:4, Funny)
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2009: Ten laptop per child program begins production
August 4, 2010: Laptop population reaches Ten Laptops Per Child (TLPC) target
August 29, 2010: Children become self aware, initiate intercontinental ballistic laptop piefight
Did Tony Soprano pitch this? (Score:2)
Ten bucks a laptop? (Score:2)
yeah well... (Score:2)
Frankly it's really immature and naive to think it's possible with todays tech. Even the XO is costing over $100 to make in decent bulk quantities. A $10 laptop would really be cheap, and probably of next to no use to anyone. Hell I bet the case and screen of the XO costs more than $10. Let alone the logic board, keyboard, power supply, etc...
I think this is just a sign of things to come. Intel with their version of the XO, now India
yes but (Score:2)
This is COMPLETELY POSSIBLE! (Score:2, Insightful)
Ever used computer with less than megabyte of persistent storage? I have.
Now lets talk about silicon costs.
Putting few megabytes of ram, all periphelia controllers and tiny CPU, and some flash [non-compatible, designed locally to avoid IP issues], could be put on 3$ chip.
Thats right, computer as powerfull as early 90's computer could be build in single really cheap chip.
No it won't run quake 2. Perhaps you could port first quake for it though.
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Times Of India link (Score:5, Informative)
They'll do it Euro-Style (Score:2, Insightful)
"We're going to make the biggest, fastest, dreamiest jet in the world, and it'll be the cheapest jet money can buy!!!!!"
"Oh, by the way, oh pretty please can we have $5 billion in free money to build it with? Thanks citizens of Europe!!!"
100 Rupee Latop? (Score:2)
Afraid of markets ? (Score:2)
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Re:As if! Look at the breakdown costs... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Can a governmental body understand this?
How does a government institution spend money:
1. Spend three times more than needed.
2. Promise ten times and deliver nothing.
They're doing a great job.
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In any case, one million units is not a very high number. Asus alone sells more than that every year, and they're one of the smaller players on the global scale.
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You're thinking western style laptop. I'm guessing this is more of a 16 character x one line display, touch screen, everything built on the back of the LCD itself. What we'd call a middle-finger-top computer here in the US, or a flash drive with added flash in the far east.
Well, pedantically you could say that any computer that fits on your lap is a "laptop", but in general use there's some sort of underlying meaning that your ultra-basic computer strays too far from.
Whilst there may be a use for such a computer in certain contexts, as general purpose education tools, let alone anything approaching "I.T.", it would be laughably crude and not even remotely plausible as a cheaper alternative to the OLPC.
For $10, I don't think it's remotely possible to build a "laptop" that
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As for the display... make it an acessory. Like the lcd displays you can buy to hook to videgames, to make them more or less portable. And make analog video out, so you can plug it into any TV set.
It might not cost U$10... but will be close enougth.
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Aw, you missed my humor. What possible use would a one line, 16 character, display be?
Yeah, I should have picked up on that; it was rather silly :-)
A $10 laptop is an absurdity. OTOH, I'm old enough to remember $500 4 function calculators and would have thought blister-packed $1.00 calculators an absudity.
True, but the situations you describe date back 20 to 35 years. In 20 years time, I'm quite confident it'll be possible to build a $10 "laptop" that outperforms the present-day OLPC, albeit with some corners cut (i.e. still don't expect a "real" keyboard). But the $10 laptop proposal clearly isn't designed with this in mind and- as you say- the idea is an absurdity in today's market.
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Fundamental flaw with your plan: making Y lower than X.
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Several of the affluent states had a overcapacity.
Biogas maybe? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Umm no... (Score:2)
Why don't they just save time and sell these [portable-e...rators.com] instead?
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That would be plastic. Go have a look at the Reva [revaindia.com] sometime. Small electric car, mostly plastic panels over a minimal steel subframe. Whether it stands up to acceptable crashworthiness standards is anyones guess, however they are relatively low speed vehicles.
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What operating system would this run? Somehow I don't think Microsoft is going to let India have *any* Windows product for free.
They certainly would if it was ultimately a cut-down version that didn't impinge upon sales of their "real" Windows (which the cheap Windows machines would be designed to work with) and locked mainstream use into that of Windows-based technologies, so that higher-end users would be strongly pushed towards using (again) "real" Windows simply because it's what 99% of the country uses.
The money to be made from users of the cut-down Windows would likely be negligible compared to the profit made from locking