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!"

Comments

but will it sell in Japan?

[Killall -9 Bash]

Does it have IR ports so i can trade my pokemon with friends?

Hand held computers are for kids, and adults who choose to let their jobs intrude into their personal life more than it has to.

My people?

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

Because the device can convert text to speech, it can help teach villagers how to read the local language, Kannada.

I can read Kannadian too - I'm from Kannada. It's kinda cold, but hardly a third world country...

(ok, that was bad, moderators feel free to bury this one :)

Re:My people?

[aat]

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

A Noble Endeavor

[m.lemur]

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?

Re:A Noble Endeavor

[runenfool]

What do you mean? With computers they can get food, water, and medicine over the internet!

Re:A Noble Endeavor

[YahoKa]

Here is a bit from the simputer FAQ:

# 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.

Re:A Noble Endeavor

[jericho4.0]

I think the simputer needs to be evaluated in a different way than a normal handheld. The article points out that it could be owned communally by a village and provide many usefull services to rural villagers.

It still needs to be shown that a collection of illiterate folks can get enough out of the device to make it cost-effective though. The article also mentions the difficulty in finding power for the device, but fails to mention availability of internet access. This seems to be an important detatil.

Re:A Noble Endeavor

[pe1rxq]

Just feeding the starving isn't going to help much.
You need to find a structural solution.
Besides there are plenty of places (e.g. India) were starvation is not the biggest problem, but lack of education. And there things like this will help.
You instantly get all the knowledge from the internet (insert porn joke here :) for free.
E.g. a farmer could learn himself the latest new techniques for increasing the amount of crops...

Jeroen

Re:A Noble Endeavor

[MyHair]

What I found interesting is that in that paragraph he pooh-poohed the $250 community device with simple-to-understand user interface (his description) and text-to-speech capability to help the illiterate and suggests that high-end text messaging mobile phones may usurp its purpose.

Cellular phones aren't cheap. We Americans think they are sometimes, but try to buy one without signing up for a year of service. They are US$300-US$500 last I checked (Nextel Motorola i500's and i1000's at Office Depot w/out service). That figure doesn't necessarily fairly compare with the quoted $250 for the Simputer because my cell phone price is USD in a US retail store and they will likely be much cheaper in the "developing world", and I presume the quoted $250 for the Simputer would be the "developing world" price.

Plus a cellular phone requires an ongoing expense. Depending on how they set it all up, they may pay a relitavely high price for the phones and low price for service or vice versa for one to offset the other, but I doubt this solution will be much cheaper than the Simputer even if they share one mobile phone for text messaging.

Re:A Noble Endeavor

[MyHair]

E.g. a farmer could learn himself the latest new techniques for increasing the amount of crops...

As soon as I read that I had a vision of farmers trying quite unconventional techniques for effect more than for production and a blog with lots of stories about crop modding. Time to search for that backyard tesla coil that guy made...

Re:A Noble Endeavor

[MrResistor]

Many of the poor parts of India are kept poor by their lack of information access. For example, they are unable to obtain information about the going price for rice, so a distributer can come in and buy their rice very cheap, and the farmers don't even know they're getting screwed. When they can get a decent price for their rice, then maybe they will have enough money to start taking care of things like clean running water on their own. Giving handouts and taking care of peoples problems for them is always a second rate solution. Self-sufficiency has to be the goal of any program designed to help the impoverished, and increasingly, even in third world countries, self sufficiency is dependent on education.

Re:A Noble Endeavor

[nelsonal]

Great now we will get "spanish prisoner" scams from India and other countries as well. : )
While they mention that it could be used to check government papers, and commodity prices, I have to wonder if this will truly be useful. I would be surprised if the grapevine isn't pretty accurate in relaying crop price info, and how often do you need to access government documents in a country with per capita income in the $100 per year range, you probably still have to travel into the city to bribe the official to get what you want done anyway. These simputers seem pretty pie in the sky to me, but if they really do improve lives more power to them. It seems to me this money would be better spend on water purification, literacy programs, or other human capital efforts.
A better solution would be to eliminate crop subsidies in the US, Japan, and Western Europe and buy our crops from these countries. They would cost less, and cut our tax bills. I realize it would eliminate many jobs here and in Europe, but it would save consumers more, and I'm sure a US cotton farmer can find another job better than an Indian, African, or South American sugar, corn, or cotton farmer. It seems odd to me, that the poorest farmers in the world are generally taxed, while the richest farmers recieve government aid.

Re:A Noble Endeavor

[ryochiji]

> are computers really a priority?

Give someone a fish, they get a meal. Teach them to fish, and they'll feed themselves.

I think the same concept might be applicable to computers in developing and/or oppressive nations. Information is power. When empowered, people can do far more than get water.

Someone's going to say, "But look at China and the Great Firewall". Yes, as things stand now, the internet and computers don't empower people to the fullest extent. But when the internet becomes truly decentralized (so that something like the Great Firewall becomes impossible) and computers become cheap enough, don't be surprised if there are changes on a global scale.

Re:A Noble Endeavor

[perfessor multigeek]

Yes, and my thought was, hmmm.. how much does a sybian-based phone with keyboard, color screen, text messaging and multi-protocol phone go for these days? By the time these folks are up and running the Nokia 9210s and their less-expensive cousins will be getting down to about the same price range.
Hey, the Simputer people *sorta* have their hearts in the right place, but capitalism will be providing this stuff just fine in a few years anyway.
They'ld probably be better off buying up tons of old Palms and Newtons with some of their millions and using them to get working computers out there NOW rather than creating yet another platform. People seem to forget that an *authorized* licence of pretty much any non-Microslime OS can be had for five or six dollars in quantity if you're willing to get stuff a few releases back. What do you think copies of Mac OS System 6 are going for these days? Wanna bet that there isn't some school out there that converted to Windoze years ago and would sell them for the cost of shipping?
Looks a bit like hubris to me. Kinda reminds me of when Brazil went into the car manufacturing business.
Wishing the people of India well but doubting that a non-profit, NIH-obsessed bunch of do-gooders is the way to go,
Rustin

Re:A Noble Endeavor

[mysticgoat]

Will people in developing countries be able to justify the expenditure of $250 on a device that may be helpful but is not essential?

Alice is a shrewd 17 year old who plans to build on her investment in a Simputer and a cell phone until she achieves world domination. With the optimism of youth, she figures that will happen when she's about 25. After all, she needs two years to pay off the Co-op loan she took to get the things, and then she needs to really learn how read and write, too. That might take a little while. But she's willing to put off starting her family until she's 25. Much as she wants kids, she wants to be rich, first.

One of Alice's clients of the day is Bob, who is a 28 year old who has a full set of socket wrenches, a number of other tools, a backpack, and an excellent memory of the exploded diagrams of the half dozen different types of Briggs & Stratton engines that are in use within walking distance. Today he brings Alice a broken fan belt from Chuck's rototiller. With him helping her figure out the part identification code, Alice is able to find a store that has a replacement in stock, fifteen miles-- a round-trip walk of only a day-- away. That's much better than the fifty mile trip to the city.

Chuck, who tagged along with Bob in a very worried fashion, is delighted at this good news. Three years ago his tiller had also broken down in the middle of planting season, and it had taken a week of sending a runner around to the distant towns to find the needed part. A week without work had thrown off the usual schedule, and while his farmer clients understood these things happen, some of their wives were angry at him because their kids had to be pulled out of school to hoe the fields, and those families had become the butt of village jokes for months. Nobody likes to be called "old fashioned", not that way. Chuck had lost something much more important than just the loss of income in that debacle, and he did not want to repeat it.

Alice, the shrewd businesswoman, suggested that if Bob and Chuck wanted her to, maybe she could try to broker a delivery deal and get the new belt into Bob's hands before noon. At first they thought she was joking: same day delivery, better even than the mythical FedEx! But after a few minutes of enjoyable haggling, the three agreed to a payment. Then Alice chased them out of hearing distance, while she did furtive things with the internet access and the cell phone. No, I won't reveal her trade secrets, so don't ask me. Something about a regional network of teenage girls with Simputers, but you didn't hear that from me.

The upshot was that 10 minutes later Chuck started sloshing across the western marsh to the highway, where he was to flag down a Frito Lay delivery truck heading east. The driver would give him the fan belt, and also a dozen batteries and a bag of potato chips for Alice. Meanwhile, Bob went back to the rototiller and began removing cover plates and things that needed to come off before the new belt could go on.

End of story: Chuck is back in business before the day has even started to get hot. Bob's reputation for fast, friendly, quality field service is even more enhanced. That evening Alice counts the day's take with a laugh, and then gently tells her latest suitor that no, she's not yet ready to marry. There is a world out there and she is going to claim her piece of it. Marriage and children have to wait awhile.

Re:A Noble Endeavor

[perfessor multigeek]

Yeah, a normal phone system and pamphlets at the UNDP outpost wouldn't work at all for finding out those things.
Actually in most cases, no it wouldn't. Supply side control is always less efficient at supplying information than demand side. Would you want somebody deciding for you what you wanted to read?
Back in the Fifties they started having what we would now call black studies sections in urban libraries. But all of them were stocked by librarians elsewhere who first decided what "those Negros" would want and then sent it to them. It wasn't until I think, 1970, that a hippie librarian (well, actually, my mother) put together the funding to get a city library located in an SRO (single room occupancy hotel, i.e. fleabag) in a black neighborhood and ask the local library users what they wanted.
Surprise, surprise! they wanted entirely different stuff.
We all are so fiercely protective of our freedom to use the Internet as we choose, not be questioned about what we check out at the library, and so forth, but somehow when it comes to getting information to the truly desperate, we turn patriarchal (matriarchal?) and assume that we should decide for them.
Give 'em tools. And step back.
Rustin

Re:A Noble Endeavor

[anonymous cupboard]

From experience in another country (Uzbekistan), many of the farmers (I would say the majority) do not know world prices. Information is much more carefully controlled there in India, but India is much bigger and has a lower rate of literacy, particularly in rural areas.

I agree with you, arbitrage is cool, but you will find that it is difficult for people to bypass the existing middlemen without information.

As for other uses of IT, I'm a firm believer in GIS. Land ownership is often somewhat questionable and it is and avantage to everyone knowing who has what, and what the government thinks it is providing. For example, did that water pipe that the Govt think it has provided really ever get built? If the people know of the plans, they will make sure that things happen rather than let it dissappear in corruption.

Design sucks!

[tomhudson]

Although the Simputer can run on three AAA batteries, it can operate for only a few hours before draining them. And in the developing world, even batteries are expensive and hard to come by. </quote>

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.

Re:Design sucks!

[McCart42]

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.

Re:Design sucks!

[Lumpy]

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.

From the FAQ

[extagboy]

Q: Can I create a Beowulf cluster using many Simputers?

A: You must be a /.er; in which case you know the answer!

Its about time someone recognized the Beowulf Clustering needs of Slashdotters!

screen res

[rendermouse]

If you go by that screenshot, that thing must have 1280 resolution. You gotta love people who Photoshop screen mockups of web pages onto PDAs.

Interface

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

In addition, the Simputer has a program called Tapatap that displays a three-by-three grid; you can input a letter or number by tapping on the squares of the grid in a particular sequence.

Welcome to interface hell.

Seriously, this idea probably won't fly. As they say in the article, mobile phones will be much more practical and cheaper, and given the user interface description (ok, only half the story, but anyway), much easier to use. There is little that this device could do that someone couldn't accomplish with a phone (except for, perhaps, teaching literacy, but can't you do that with picture books or cassette tapes or something cheaper?)

Sounds very expensive.

[stevejsmith]

$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?

Even more important as an enabler

[jki]

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.

What's the Difference with the PDA from Dell ?

[Khalid]

This is not a troll just a question, but I fail to see a real advantage of this on the last PDA from Dell. Which does cost the same price if my memory serves Well.

The Indian Paysan with not really care if it rans Linux or not, the most important factor is the price.

Re:Coming to a store near me?

[Iguanaphobic]

Yes, we need to hit ALL of the third world countries. :-)

such a good idea?

[tps12]

This is exciting technology. Every couple of months, it seems like we're moving closer to the day when I can carry a computer around with me wherever I go. In the long run, especially as it is portrayed in the many science fiction novels I read, humanity has nothing to lose and everything to gain from making computers more ubiquitous.

Something that occurs to me is that making decisions based on long term outcome can have unforseen, or undesirable, effects in the short term. Industrialization has been beneficial to everyone, but a few generations lived in filth and poverty when it was first introduced. Which doesn't mean that we shouldn't have industrialized in the early 19th century, just that maybe we should have thought about it a little more beforehand. Yeah, I know, 20/20 hindsight and all that.

I don't think there's really any danger to the people of India from this device. I do, however, fear that we may be putting ourselves at risk by permitting them to use this technology. India has always been unstable, and with both it and Pakistan in possession of nucular weapons, it might be better to keep powerful computers out of their hands. They shouldn't be denied access to them, but that access should probably be better monitored by the international community. For all intensive purposes, they pose a threat to our very nation. We need to make sure we don't allow the events of 911 to transpire again.

literacy

[cristipp]

Many of these potential users are illiterate...

Spend the money for a literacy program in the first place.

3rd world? please...!

[bsDaemon]

as a 'soverign mediocroty' they clearly qualify as 4th world!

crazy

[minus_273]

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.

value vs some other stuff

[kisrael]

I wonder how something like this compares to the "MoneyMaker", a middling low tech human-powered irrigation device that they're selling to farmers in Kenya...from the article from :

the MoneyMaker Plus is small enough to be carried on a bicycle, simple enough that it can be installed by the farmer and repaired without any tools, and powerful enough that it can irrigate 1½ acres a day.

Seems like this answers a real direct need...except for the markets contact, I'm not sure what the simputer offers.

Two companies selling Simputer :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Cultural ingnorance and Mobile phones

[theolein]

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.