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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!"
but the final paragraph of the article sums it up perfecly:
Perhaps the greatest obstacle for the Simputer, though, is cost. Will people in developing countries be able to justify the expenditure of $250 on a device that may be helpful but is not essential? When so many communities in the Third World still lack clean drinking water and adequate medical facilities, are computers really a priority?
AAA batteries cost more than AA batteries, and provide a lot less juice.
Stupid design flaw, right off the top.
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.
$250!? For a poverty-stricken Indian farmer? You have got to be kidding me! Some make this much in six months! I don't think I'd starve for six months to get a "Simputer." It seems to me that it would be smarter for the village to buy a cheap-o computer of two. You can get an okay computer with a monitor for $500 ("okay" is a relative term, but what are a whole bunch of internet-challenged Indians going to do with a 3.06GHz computer? All they need is a simple Pentium II and a 15" monitor)...arguable five times as good as the "Simputer." And regarding power: why not sell a solar adapter?
for developing "niche" applications, aimed for specific ltasks. I don't believe Simputer alone does any magic - but it is the corner stone for providing the exact tool for exact needs - such as for creating an application for increasing milk productivity. You would not guess how complicated (and important) issue something like that can be. There are zillions of cases like this which could be solved with very simple (and intentionally very simple) applications. Before, it was just impossible to have that application reach those in need.
Many of these potential users are illiterate...
Spend the money for a literacy program in the first place.
250-300? for that thing? WHY? This is such a dumb idea.
More over, if you are illiterate and poverty stricken, how do they expect you to pay for this?
Middle class i could understand, but the middle class might was well get a DELL or Ipaq.. much better for less
looks more like a national pride thing than anything else. Sort of saying.. yeah.. we can make PDAs too! tisk. pretty sad if you ask me.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
It's very cheap and easy to teach people to read, all it takes is manpower, and that's an abundant resource in India. English is the main language of commerce and government in India, and overall literacy is 52%, not bad for an agrarian system. Instead of buying this obscenely expensive, battery-hungry computer, illiterate people would be better off clubbing together to pay for a teacher. If they then want a small computer they could do better on price and appropriateness.
Saying poor people don't need telephones is like saying they don't need roads because you can't eat roads. But how can you get vaccines to remote areas without decent roads, and how can people access local markets?
What really poor people need is some way of making a decent living, not food aid - except in an emergency. Cell phones are spreading rapidly in South Asia right now among surprisingly poor people. Thea aren't individually owned, either groups buy them or they are bought by very small entrepreneurs as pay phones, often supported by micro lending.
Poor people sometimes save for weeks or months to make a single phone call. This is mentioned in passing in the sciam article. It may seem abstract, but it's reality in poor countries.
I bragged about my Karma at a job interview but I didn't get the job.
Yeah. Percolation of information into the villages is good and all, but I live in India and fail to see why they didn't target their platform at a standard desktop PC.
Without doubt, a second-hand desktop could be purchased for the same price in India. Don't see how illiterate farmers would be coaxed to squint at a palm-sized b&w screen with arcane symbols. Nor do I see how one simputer per village is going to make people literate.
There are already initiatives for a Tamil and a Hindi linux distro - clearly, coupled with inexpensive desktops, these can take computer literacy a long way. I would still be skeptical about these delivering the three R's to the illiterate.
At any rate, the internet still is not something that a villager has access to. Even at cities, internet usage (via dial-up) costs 80 cents an hour. In villages, typically $2 an hour. And a typical middle class family pulls in $400 every month. A poor man earns only $40 a month.
In summary, I'd say: yes, the greatest handicap of the Indian peasant is lack of information. But the simputer is a remarkably bad solution.