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Scientific American Reviews 'Simputer' PDA
Bill Kendrick writes "The 'Simputer' (Simple, Inexpensive, Multilingual Computer), a Linux-based PDA developed by the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India, and released a few weeks ago, has been reviewed by Scientific American, and they seem to like it!"
# Q: $200 still sounds like it might be expensive for poor communities - will the government be providing financial aid for purchases?
A: We hope government and large multilateral organizations will use the Simputer as a platform for various IT initiatives, indirectly making it affordable for poor communities to get access to Simputers.
We have also recognized that even $200 could be too high and such products may need to be subsidized. However, we have added a SmartCard as a prime method of enabling the "sharing" of such devices. Rural communities could own several devices and hire these out for usage to individuals based on the ownership of a SmartCard. Each user's Smart Card would contain the minimum "personalization" information required to log into a Community Server which would maintain personalized data about the user. You can treat this as some sort of "roaming profile" information maintained in a smart card.
This model of sharing would bring down the cost of the Simputer to that of owning only a simple smart card, and paying for the usage of a shared Simputer.
Shared Simputers could be made available in rural schools, community halls or other such areas where common facilities are usually found.
"Put together by the Simputer Trust, a nonprofit organization based in Bangalore, India. This year Encore Software, a Bangalore company that licensed the technology from the trust (not to be confused with the California software company of the same name), plans to sell thousands of the handheld devices, capping an effort that began in 1998."
I could be wrong here...but Ni-Cad? How is that environmentally friendly (reusability aside)? Wouldn't NiMH be a better option both performance-wise and from a disposability standpoint? When a Ni-Cad battery dies on you in India, how many places are there nearby to recycle it, and how much damage would it do if the cadmium leaked into a water supply?
I would definitely say a rechargeable power pack is a good decision, I only question the Ni-Cad aspect of it.
"I may be quite wrong." - Socrates
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India isn't some backwater, hick country. India is a vibrant technologically advanced world power. Almost 20% of Microsoft employees are of Indian descent, and that number holds across the industry. They have some of the best Mathematics schools in the world whose students outperform MIT and CalTech in international competitions every year. They have subsidized university for anyone who wants to go with extra scholarships for those who want to study the sciences. They have done well with their difficult soil and terrain using modern farming techniques and have made the desert blossom (a far cry from the barren wasteland of Pakistan, across the border).
Maybe if you left your house for a minute you'd notice that there is a whole world out there that isn't stuck in some Discovery Channel nature reserve. They don't live in mud huts and they don't scavenge for food. People across the world shop at supermarkets and have refrigeration and electricity. Just because you think they "need" this kind of hand-me-down crap to learn how to "purify water, how to diagnose simple ailments" doesn't make you a good person. It makes you an ignorant person. It marks you as one who hasn't taken the time to learn about other cultures and countries. And that is sad.
Solar panels and a ni-cad power pack would be cheaper in the mid-term, and environmentally much more friendly. There's more ... just read the article.
Are you MAD? first off. Nicad batteries are the absolute worst to use use something with a low self-drain-off and higher capacity with 10 times the life expectancy.. Li-ion or Nickle Metal Hydride. both are not as toxic as Ni-cad's after disposal (Cadmium is NASTY) second have the solar panel a seperate item. a nice 1 foot by 2 foot panel on the hut with a wire running down to plug the unit into. It'll charge it in a couple of days around most hot regions. and if you use the right kind of solar panel.. the flexible silicon ones, they will last much longer.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There are two companies selling Simputer -
(1) PicoPeta:
Simputer Development Kits (http://www.picopeta.com/products/simdek.php)
Products & Services (http://www.picopeta.com/products/index.php)
Simputer Development Kits PicoPeta's Simputer Development Kits are all that you would need to develop applications for the Simputer platform. Kits have the following components, and are available in three handy packages:
Components of the Simputer Development Kits (download as PDF)
1. Simputer units (with accessories - power supply, battery, bag, user manual, cover, stylus, serial cable)(specifications)
2. SmartCards
3. PC-based Dev. Tools
SimPCync (data transfer)
Snaps (PC-side graphical display)
Malacca (IML interace)
Layout Manager for IML
Flite (Text-to-speech in English)
PicoPeta Flash Cooker (loads OS)
Package Manager
Linux Distribution (includes Perl, TCL/Tk, MySQL)
Cross Compilation Tools (C/C++ toolchain, Arm libraries)
4. Simputer-side Software
Malacca (IML interace)
MySQL for Simputer
SQLite for the StrongArm
Perl for the StrongArm
TCL/Tk for the StrongArm
FileSync
Printer driver
Dhvani (Text-to-speech engine)
Tap-a-tap (soft keyboard)
Package Manager
5. Simputer Applications
Spreadsheet
Notepad
Scientific Calculator
Image Viewer
MP3 player
Web browser
Address Book
6. Developer Documentation (code samples, how-tos, tricks & tips)
7. Technical Support for one month (email and instant messaging)
You could also download the above information as a PDF file.
Denominations
Simputer Development Kits are available in the following denominations:
Platinum: 10 Simputers, 20 SmartCards, 10 licenses for software (pricing: Rs. 190,000 in India, US $4,599 overseas)
Gold: 5 Simputers, 10 SmartCards, 5 licenses for software (pricing: Rs. 98,000 in India, US $2,499 overseas)
Silver: 2 Simputers, 5 SmartCards, 2 licenses for software (pricing: Rs. 49,000 in India, US $1,299 overseas)
Who should buy Simputer Development Kits?
The short answer is, "anyone interested in developing software for a cutting-edge handheld computer."
The long aswer:
Software companies whose clients require mobile computing solutions based on SmartCards, Text-to-speech, a high degree of mobility, simplicity, computing power or Linux (Technical Advantages)
Engineering Colleges and other educational institutions who want their students to learn Embedded Systems, Linux, Handheld programming, Pervasive computing, Simple-to-use interfaces and non-Engligh interfaces in a hands-on manner
Corporates who want to empower their road warriors with a full-featured mobile computer (Business Advantages)
Use the Simputer Development Kits to conduct pilot projects in your company / at your client's organiation. In a typical case, a company may use 3 Simputers for development and testing say, a Sales Force Automation Application, while deploying 7 Simputers on the field (ie, with various user groups).
How to buy Simputer Development Kits Please contact us for details of payment, terms, delivery period etc.
(2)Encore Software Ltd :
http://www.simputerland.com
http://www.ncoretech.com/simputer/index.html
REPLY TO MY MESSAGE FROM CEO of Encore Technologies(S) Pte Ltd :
> Hi, Thanks for all the views and anxieties expressed vis a vis the Simputer and Sharp Zaurus. I would like to give a view to the world from an Encore Simputer perspective. 1. Sharp Zaurus or indeed any other PDA approaches the market from a product perspective. Simputer is a platform and we approach the market for Encore Simputer as being a customizable platform for industry vertical applications. We will provide the Simputer in various form factors - pocket sized, larger screen, embedded device etc. 2. We offer the Simputer along with a industry/enterprise specific solution as a dedicated, total offering. Not as an off-the-shelf product. 3. We are building a common platform for all our partners to leverage each others' strengths and offer their solutions globally. For example, at our recently conducted partner meet in Singapore, our partner who has developed and is currently implementing a solution for utility meter reading in India has demonstrated the solution to the rest of the partner community in meet representing 10 other countries. This solution attracted interest for Egypt, Mauritius, South Africa and Eastern Europe markets from where the other partners that were here hail from. One of the partners from UK has a solution for Insurance agents that has attracted interest in India. The number of such possibilities is limitless. In contrast, Software developers building solutions on the Sharp and other such devices have to fight among themselves as well as with the product developer to make a market. 4. A product's destiny in the market is determined by several factors - timing, pricing, specifications/features, as well as application/implementation. We do not have a drawback on any of these aspects. There could be an overlap in some specifications with Zaurus or other such products but that is in no way a threat to the Simputer and its potential or mission. 5. Members of the community who are committed to building solutions and businesses based on the Simputer should visit http://www.simputerland.com our partner portal and consider joining our partner program.
Best regards
Ravi Desiraju
CEO, Encore Technologies(S) Pte Ltd
Actually, it's like this:
One national Language - Hindi, spoken by 30% of population, mainly in North India. It is an Indo-European language of the Indo-Aryan sub-branch, understood by about half of the population, primarily northern Indian speakers of closely related Indo-Aryan languages. Hindi is unrelated to the Dravidian languages of southern India (e.g. Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu) spoken by about 25% of India's population.
One associate language - English, spoken as a second language by about the elite 10% of the population, throughout India.
The following are the other official languages of India:
Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit (in order of native speakers in India, and yes there are native speakers of Sanskrit.)
Nepali, Konkani, and Manipuri are also official languages, but they became so relatively recently, and I'm not sure of their exact number of native language speakers, though they all probably have less than 20 million native speakers in India.
In addition there are many other languages spoken in India. Click
here for a list of Indian languages with more than a million native speakers
First of all I am somehow shocked by the racism and total lack of cultural perspective often shown here. Words like "Habib" and "dothead" remind me of the Sihk who was killed at his gas station in the US after 9/11 last year. Firstly, most Indians (not all but most) are Hindu. Secondly, lumping millions if not billions of people into one basket is below the level of even some of the more sickening trolls on this forum. Thirdly (and please don't take this as anti-American, because it's not meant that way), It often seems that people here compare items like this from their own social and economic perspectives. For the target audience, most of whom have never seen a computer before, arguments about the processor speed etc and other commercial systems, such as Dell's PDA or a Palm are not exactly useful. No one in this device's target audience can afford commercial WinCE or Palm software. For a village in India or CAR (Central African Republic) that has to club together to buy a device like plus a hand generator or a small solar cell, $20 for some software to do text to speech In Their Language (since the ability to read english is strangely not universal) is a lot of money in an area where the per capita annual income is about $400.
While the gist of the idea is an axcellent one, I agree completely with the SA article in that mobile phones will probably fit these people's needs better. Wireless communication is already more widespread in Africa than landlines and most mobile phones based on the symbian platform offer localised languages and extremely easy to use interfaces as well as the ability to load Java applications which can do extra tasks needed by these people.