Slashdot Mirror
State Of The Simputer
2br02b writes "Readers might recall the Simputer (Simple, Inexpensive, Multilingual Computer) whose story Slashdot has been following over the past few years, including its release in October 2002 and most recently the Scientific American article in November. Rediff.com has an informative overview on the status of what was introduced as a low-cost computer for the poor to be sold for under Rs 10000 ($200). Of the two companies that have been given licences, one has yet to put the product on the market while the other is only looking at bulk sales at prices from Rs 12000 to Rs 20000 ($400). Only between 1500 and 2000 Simputers are out on the market."
HOw about we concentrate on basic human needs like food, clean, running water and shelter before we go doling out handhelds to people?
I'm not at all against technology education and maximizing its use wherever possible, but there truly are some things that must take priority here.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess 200-400$ aren't that little for a poor Indian. Apart from that fact that I have to wonder whatfor people living in some fuckin slum need a computer!
I don't think there is much point in this.. a mobile phone could encapsulate most of this functionality for a quater the price. Simon.
So now pricing it up there with laptops and high end handhelds will get it selling? Wasn't the whole point of the simputer as computing for the masses and not the uber-rich? (Yes kiddies, you are considered Uber rich to 4/5ths the worlds' population.)
Another great idea tanked by a bunch of PHB's
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
with my Automated Bead Array Computational Unit System. This can be made much more cheaply, the batteries alst forever, and it never crashes!
isn't there a better way to provide computing technology to the third-world masses? perhaps someone should start a program for donating old, outdated computers for the good of poorer nations. (if there isn't already one)
Rs 12000
Rs 12000
In the reverse of many of the comments on here, who wouldn't want a less expensive computer, provided it still did the functions they need? I agree that gamers need the latest hardware, etc. but shouldn't these machines first go to replace the expensive desktops here in the U.S., and perhaps some of our excess food supply could go over there? A poor person would probably prefer numerous free lunches to a free laptop.
stuff |
To be so close to having a computer accessible by all. It is hard to estimate what the implications could have been if everyone, every where had access to a computer. But of course the inventors yet again failed to factor in corporate greed.
If you don't stop reading this right now you owe me $1,000. Send check or money order too...
An idea like this sounds fantastic - but is riddled with potential problems.
If they produce something with low capabilities, but a low, low price, then they will be accused of producing underpowered rubbish.
As soon as you start to increase the potential of the platform, the costs start to rise until you have an elitist product that the intended market cannot afford.
There *may* be a happy medium somewhere, but the edvil is in the details of finding it. In the consumerist marketplace we have in the West, production prices are already pushed as low as possible. Squeezing out extra pennies in production is almost impossible. The potential is there though to reduce prices through the marketing and adminitration side of things (pay no fat-cat salaries to the sales & management departments), but then again the product quickly becomes unfashionable and therefore undesirable.
I would love to see such a product to succeed, but it's a hell of an uphill stuggle!
A little planning goes a long way...
If that's where our tech support and software development jobs are going, then their wages will go up, and an increasing number of them will be able to afford the simputer, right? As for those knee-jerkers who say, "let's provide food, water, etc. first" please remember that this is being marketed and sold by a private company that has no obligation to address those sorts of social problems. If anything, increasing a country's tech literacy helps increase the general prosperity
They fucked up. $400 is way too expensive for a poor indian person to afford.
"Well, it's not a cheap computer.
Its proponents have since discarded the buzzword -- 'cheap computer' -- that brought the Simputer into the limelight.
"We are not making a cheap computer. We are making a sophisticated device that will make computing possible for everyone," declares Professor Manohar."
What a crock of bull. How is computing possible for "everyone" when "most" Indians can't afford to spend $400 on a PDA?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess 200-400$ aren't that little for a poor Indian. Apart from that fact that I have to wonder whatfor people living in some **** slum need a computer!
I'm not sure how it works in India, but it is probably (please correct me if I'm wrong) similar to the Philippines where the average college graduate makes about $300 / month.
If you assume that the average college graduate in the US makes $3k - $4k / month, then a fair comparison would be a $3500 computer in the U.S. to a $300 computer in the Philippines (or perhaps, India). From an expense point of view, it is likely to be affordable (although certainly a luxury).
But to imagine that these people do not wish to communicate, learn and reach out to the world through the Internet is fairly ignorant. In my experience with families from the third world, a computer (and even a broadband connection, which can be had for pennies on our dollars) is more desirable than a telephone or television.
My conclusion? The simputer may not fit the bill, but the need and economics are right on.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
>people were interchanging polarities while inserting batteries and battery contacts were coming loose due to rough handling.
The UI interface better be really really simple.
And yes I think this is a dumb idea. Just give them old desktop computers. There is no reason for portability to be simple, inexpensive or multilingual.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
You could argue that the poor could use these cheap computers to help them get food, water etc.
... computers, they could use them to improve there farming and harvest more food or to make a better profit selling their harvest.
For example: If you give poor farmers in Africa, India,
This is much better than just giving them food. Computers could help solve THE PROBLEM instead of just curing the symptoms.
However, there are many other problems:
- Lot's of poor people can't read/write.
- If they can read/write, can they often can't read/write English
- in some poor countries there is a power shortage
- Who will educate all these people on how to use computers?
They're called "books". They've been around for hundreds of centuries, they have been translated and localised into every laungauage conceivable, they have documented almost every achivement known to man, and they run without batteries.
Technology for technolgies sake. What a load of rubbish.
One can already but desktops (with monitors) for less than $300. They are not what is needed but the price is there.
I also am aware that any computer for 3rd world must have batteries and solar capability, AND be dirt/water resistant. But with lower prices for smaller (12in.) flat screens and integration, why is it so hard? As an afterthought, ever wondered what these computers would use for printers? Do they come with a roll of 5-inch "cash register" paper and a few spares for an internal printer?
1. AA batteries, not AAA or fixed rechargeable Li-ION. AAA have a terribly low capacity (~450mAh compared to up to 1900mAh for AA).
2. Cheap and robust external power supply. Batteries are expensive.
2. B&W screen, for godsake. Color is luxury, make a high-contrast large, protected B&W screen that can show decent amounts of information.
3. Little chiclet keyboard that plugs in to a mini-USB slot. Something like the old Spectrum keyboards, cheap, nasty, unbreakable.
That would make it cheaper and more useful. Imagine a computer you'd happily give to an 10-year old, no matter if it breaks.
Lastly, I'd add bluetooth because it's a tiny extra cost, only a few $, and provides unbreakable networking and connectivity better than any physical connection, and make the whole thing run on a stripped-down embedded Linux.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I must be tired today... i fell for that link twice!
stuff |
Considering the fact that 16% of the planet doesn't even make $400 a year , this is still ridiculously expensive.
X-box linux?
I seem to remember, when the Simputer first hit the backpages of IT newspaper supplements, that the point of the simputer was to provide a set of designs that could be produced cheaply, the idea being that this production would then be available to anyone with the right resources/motivation, rather than just those who wanted to sell it for profit to geeky businessmen. When I signed onto the Simputer mailing list, there was a lot of talk about this, and the method in which a charge would only be entailed for mass-producers - everybody else, wanting to produce less than a certain number of units, was free to take the designs (and the software, IIRC) and use them.
Casting an eye over the Simputer site reveals an interesting addition - the SGPL, or Simputer General Public License. There are then TWO separate licenses (the SDML and the, uh, SDML to manufacture it. Alas, I have no time at the moment to work out precisely what the differences are, though judging by the title ("Simputer" versus "Simputerised"), this is something to do with which components you intend to use.
Nevertheless, it would seem that the original intention to roll out a technology for the common good has slipped a little, though the reasons for this I can only speculate on, and would be wrong to do so... Alas, I think that the most practical way to achieve the original goals, to promote the use of communication technologies (as this is the essential bit) in the same way that radio technology spread, is to make it truly owned by nobody, veritably public domain. To achieve it alongside commercial interests means something usually has to give on one side or the other.
On a different note, perhaps the EU could gleam some advice on patents from the SGPL too...
It's strange how SimCity, SimCoaster, SimSafari and the Sims all were priced normally, and yet SimPuter appears to be behind schedule and way overpriced.
Perhaps moving development offshore isn't the cost saver it's been promoted as.
:)
I can't seem to find the machine in your second link. Would you mind pointing it out to me?
I dunno, but at Price.Ru you can find plenty of PCs for $200+ and plenty of monitors for $100+. That's $300-350 for a new off-the-shelf computer and you don't even need a new name for that. There surely must be a way to make a functional computer for $200. That would be worth mentioning, not a $400 low-end PC.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Commodity computers are still on "Internet time". The design-to-distribution cycle of a Dell, Gateway etc. is less than sic months. Their performance-per-price nearly doubles annually. Custom computers cannot keep up. Silicon Valley is littered with the wreckage of scientific computing companies and PDAs who fell off this relentless developement trajectory.
An everyday mexican supermarket store (Gigante GDL) is selling the Palm Zire for about $52 USD.
I've seen them on the shelves for $95 USD since January and they didn't seem to move out.
Volume manufacture by medievaly underpaid chinese labour shall prove hard to overcome for the Simputer project.
LE+
Everyone should learn to read, speak, and write English. Then we can defenestrate unicode and use good old ascii for everything. This incredibly simplifies the task of writing cheap hardware and software.
A.R. Nemmer
... it was loaded with goodies. Quoting from the article- "Our Simputer comes with a smart card reader. It has a USB master that can host different kind of peripherals. It has an in-built modem, GSM/CDMA data interface, GPS receiver and the equivalent of a 400 MHZ Celeron [comment: its a SA proc]. It is a power packed machine," says Samyeer Metrani, group manager (embedded systems), Encore Technologies. Probably they needed to include the goodies for special purposes, but somehow they got in the "basic" model where many of these weren't even needed. Comeon... even Palm and Zaurus don't have GPS receiver and CDMA+GSM interface, buildin modem and a 400(!) MHz processor. The cost can surely be brought down, but then they would be competing with established players. So they chose the alternative route to play in niche markets with feature packed versions... and its very well known that benefits of economies of scale are usually not available to niche players!
- mritunjai
[sorry for HTML submission previously.] ... it was loaded with goodies. Quoting from the article-
"Our Simputer comes with a smart card reader. It has a USB master that can host different kind of peripherals. It has an in-built modem, GSM/CDMA data interface, GPS receiver and the equivalent of a 400 MHZ Celeron [comment: its a SA proc]. It is a power packed machine," says Samyeer Metrani, group manager (embedded systems), Encore Technologies.
Probably they needed to include the goodies for special purposes, but somehow they got in the "basic" model where many of these weren't even needed. Comeon... even Palm and Zaurus don't have GPS receiver and CDMA+GSM interface, buildin modem and a 400(!) MHz processor.
The cost can surely be brought down, but then they would be competing with established players. So they chose the alternative route to play in niche markets with feature packed versions... and its very well known that benefits of economies of scale are usually not available to niche players!
- mritunjai
The Simputer is a neat idea
but who is going to buy them
if you can already get something cheaper/faster
with more storage?
Here is a 1.2 Duron with a 20 gig drive for $200 US.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?produc
Of course if you have no place to plug it in
then you're hosed.
I think this whole Simputer deal was all about deceptive marketing by a company to get their name out. They touted a cheap computer for the poor and got a lot of media attention. They came up with an expensive PDA and their name got quite well publicized in the bargain
Maybe if they had outsourced the design and marketing to the U.S. the thing would be successfull! ;)
[This is recycled from something I posted about a year ago.]
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.
[It seems like this original vision is not going to happen-- reality always gets in the way of guiding visions. Nevertheless, if low cost computers promote coop purchases of supplies or coop selling arrangements, these Simputers would improve the lives of villagers.]
I know, when SCO loses this battle, we could just make them send a dollar or two for every slashdot article about them to a third world country of our choice. Before you know it, no more world hunger!
> Who will educate all these people on how to use computers?
I believe that most people on this earth are intelligent enough to eventually figure out what's going on, even if it takes them a while. Manuals help *a lot*.
☠
It's seldom so simple as that.
There are quite a few successful programs delivering food and shelter some even have access to the Internet through public libarys.
To you the Internet may not seam to be a basic need but for someone whom information means the diffrence between dying in the gutter and making a better life a pocket computer is a life saver.
The worse the situation is the more a portable computer can help.
Education is vital if a person is to break out of poverty and a portable computer is probably the best possable way to getting that education to the poor who are busy trying to stay alive.
I don't actually exist.
Nah, it would have been to big, to heavy, to poluting, have useless spoilers and would run on a gallon (ofcourse it would also ignore the easier metric system) of oil per minute and burn a hole in the ozon layer.....
And SimputerOnline would be carpet bombing india with memory sticks containing a rebranded browser.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Why does everyone keep saying "poor Indian" again and again. It ain't all that poor at all. India is the largest consumer of gold in the world. Indian programmers are among the best in the world (no offence to others). If you visit India you will see that the social system is very strong. Relatives help others, and strangers help others too. That is the reason that we do not have any social security system. Kids take care of their parents, unlike here where they go and dump them in an old-age home. People are overall a lot happy than they are in the west. IMHO.
... read "How the World Was One" by Arthur C. Clarke? In it, he describes (among other things) the massive social and economic improvements in rural India brought about by the SITE satellite TV project. A single satellite dish and even a small TV can be seen by a whole village, bringing education to even the poor and illiterate farmers.
ARE in place. I meant to say that
;-)
"the evdil is in the details" of course
A little planning goes a long way...
Not long ago, the guys from encore gave a talk at our local lug on the simputer and from what i could gleam, they now seem to be moving towards customizing the simputer for special sectors like Manufacturing cos., etc., instead of relying too much on it's original purpose to fund themselves. You can find slides from the talks here.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess 200-400$ aren't that little for a poor Indian. Apart from that fact that I have to wonder whatfor people living in some fuckin slum need a computer!
Please mod this ignorant comment down. It is not insightful.
I assist a charity that is installing computer training colleges in Ethiopia. The colleges have a huge effect - the students can go on to get jobs, move to a better location - it can literally change their lives, and they help pick up the local economy.
I read comments like this whenever this type of topic comes up on Slashdot ("why give them computers when they have hardly got enough food and drinking water..?") If all you do is provide basic necessities then these people will never be able to break out of the poverty trap.
>>They can use the computers to learn about ways of improving their farming...
So what's wrong with a photocopied pamphlet or even a book? Hundreds, perhaps thousands of booklets could be printed for the cost of one of these computers.
If the goal is the distribution of information, this is the wrong tool for the job.
>> have to wonder whatfor people living in some ... slum need a computer! ...
>>I'm a programmer now.
Enjoy it while it lasts. I can't help but wonder how long before your company outsources your job to some kid with a Simputer willing to work for 35 cents a day? Ouch!
IIRC the whole point of the simputer, was to produce a cheap multi-language system that would work reliably in third world conditions i.e. areas with unreliable or no local power, high levels of dust etc. for sale to poor governments, NGA's etc. for use in educational programs. The ideal setting is one set up in the "mud hut" one room school in a small rural village. The teacher uses it for classes, both for the village children and adults. Yes our obsolete systems could be donated, but if they sit unused because of overheating and dust or a burned out power supply, due to the poor local electrical system etc., then all we have done, is save space in our own landfill.
I have seen all the previous responses - provide them food, not computers.. provide them clothing and health facilities .. not computers.. blah blah blah..
But obviously who ever was posting it didnt have even the vaguest idea about India or for that matter any third world over populated nation.
Firstly, this is not for personal ownership. I dont think that marketing people in India expect to sell $400 product to Bhole Ram (equivalent of Joe Consumer) who earns $500 annually. This product would be for collective use - like those internet cafes- most people in developed countries use internet cafes(if at all) because they cannot lug their pc/laptop around. But its a different story in developing countries - people use them because they cant afford to buy a pc and have regular internet connection. So it makes perfect sense for a village governing body to buy one of these and provide some kind of access scheme to the villagers to use it. Why a simputer? why not a pc? firstly cost.. secondly size... last but not the least usability and maintanance.
Cellphone networks are easier to get access to than regular phone lines in india and it makes perfect sense to make provision for wireless internet access in the simputer.
Now I want to address the "why computers to the hungry?" part. Its about information dissemenation.
1. Natural disasters - floods, cyclones, forest fires.. earth quakes.
2. accidents...
3. pestilences and animal diseases.
4. Information about governance
Time and again the above have proved to be major problems in India and they took large toll because of the lack of information. In a 1977 storm surge 20k people died in coastal Andhra villages and the reason is that they never knew about the impending cyclone.
plant and animal pestilences usually sweep across the nation.. nothing much can be done about it if people are not informed in advance.
proper medical care never reaches accident victims in villages because the nearest phone is 20 miles away and the nearest doctor is 50 miles away.
Redtape is a way of life in India. If you dont know the rules of the red tape, you are so screwed. poor uninformed villagers are the ones who usually fall prey to these practises.
Now - coming to the hungry and starving part of things, people in one part of the country can die of starvation without any help reaching them - only due to the lack of information.
yes - there are millions of people under the poverty line in India. many of them can get only 1 meal a day with difficulty.. the only way to empower these people is by providing them access to information and letting them decide what they want to with their own lives.
now all you booers and nay sayers can take ur crock and shove it... u know where.
they got no food.. why give them clothes? they got no clothes.. why give them houses? they got no houses.. why freedom of speech?... you all are mary antoinettes...
In short, the Global Civil Society Laptop should be:
- Not very particular about the size and number of components you put in it.
- Not very particular about how you power it.
- Not very particular about how you hook it up to other devices.
- Not very particular about dust and water
- And not very particular about how where it gets mounted/placed
I respectfully submit to the Viridian Design movement, the internet, and the occasional slashdot reader what I felt was the best solution to these constraints - the VacuumPacked Computer The Vacuum Packed Laptop2tec ~ wants one
With devices like the Palm Zire at $99 why do you invent a "low cost" device at $400??? The Zire 71 has colour, integrated camera, lots of memory, memory card (SD/MMC), 320x320 screen what else do people need? Startup hardware companies just don't make sense anymore buy a standard platform or have some far east company (China, Singapore, Taiwain, Malayasia ....) build a standard or copy a standard, write some custom software for you're app and you are done. These guys had some blue sky idea that they could become rich selling to the poor, and then got over confident and suffered from the old standard featue creap and instead of getting rich they will be looking for a new job. They were supposed to be going low cost, but they have obviously failed. There are plenty of $400 devices on the market already I think there are PocketPC devices below $300 what is missing is the India specific stuff, and thats what they should be concentating on!!!
Currently in india, as soon as a community gets electric power, the first thing they buy is a TV.
The tv becomes their gateway to the rest of the world-- a one way feed.
if you really want, you should build a computer that costs 150$ linux machine and uses the tv as a monitor-- i think that would be a more ideal solution. Basically, if walmart can make linux machines and sell them at $200, it shouldn't be that much harder to bring the price down by 50.
in cost in rupees, that would be 7500/- cheaper than the simputer.
I know ya'll like pictures and here are some (before the final outer design):
More recent picture
Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4
Picture 5
Use of Simputer for Spot Billing of Electricity Metering
More Case
Studies
'The world's poorest two billion people desperately need healthcare, not laptops,' he said.
How is this off-topic??!!
Give a man a fish and he will have a good meal that day.
Teach the man how to fish - and he will eat for a lifetime.
I guess teaching someone how to walk on they own feet, is much better than wheeling them around. A great opportunity is being created - which has the potential to
1. mass educate people
2. eradicate poverty
3. further TRUE democracy (information is power)
Already the Indian media is far more "fair and balanced" than that in the US. People know more about the "WORLD" there. Now there is a big chance of people knowing much much more - and hopefully correcting the ways of life that hinder the growth of 1.2 billion people.
Why not support the idea? Is the rest of us afraid?
The simputer is design to be *gasp* simpler then the regular desktop computer.
(i) It was made to to used in areas where electricity is very undependable or non-existant. Where are you going to plug in that walmart PC?
(ii) It was made to be easily shared amongst a large group of people. eg. a co-operative. How are you going to share a desktop amongst a few dozen people? Wouldn't be easier to share a mobile computer?
(iii) It was made to be robust. Are you going to replace walmart's crap keyboad once someone spills something on it?
(iv) It was meant to be financed or bought as an investment. You know, like how westerners buy cars and play for college etc.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Well said friend. Some of these morons have no understanding of the situation in India. Add to that the Slashdot moderators who give a "insightful" or "interesting" rating to ignorant comments.
According to the article, there have been many recent improvements. The unit I saw a few weeks ago was no different than when I first looked at it over a year ago, so I can't comment on that.
The person I spoke with said that the intention was not for everyone to have one of these in his or her pocket, but that they were available for use and everybody gets a CF card for personal data. Not Quake stats, but more like medical records. Organizations may even give away CF cards, at a quantity cost of about a buck each.
Very few records are kept on computers in India. My feeling is that unless there is a pressing need for people to use this, then individuals are likely to think not "I have this interesting data card that can improve my life" but "I have this thing that I can sell for a dollar." Those of you that have been forced to use the All-Knowing-Magnetic-Encoded-Card by your university will understand my point about "pressing need". Additional infrastructure is needed for it to be useful.
The unit I played with (some time back) ran on AA batteries. At the time, a set of NiMh batteries lasted about an hour. This is a major problem and I hope that progress has been made. One thing I learned from years working with device manufacturers is that power is the one of the last things to be optimized in the design.
I have heard that the localization is hardcoded and that this makes it difficult to add additional language support. I don't have any more information on that. That is another important issue that needs to be addressed.
It is not "A computer for the masses." That would be about as helpful as giving everyone in India an electric bagel slicer, nobody would know what to do with it and there is no place to plug it in anyway. It is more like a point-of-sale system for personal information that is currently kept on paper. Widespread use of such a device may be helpful, but only if the CF cards are properly looked after by their keepers. I have not heard of any ideas for backup of (presumably important) electronic data.
The guys who made simputer might have had a benevolent idea in mind but its fucking going to go nowhere. Why?
Firstly, at the rate the cost of electronics is dropping, PDA's made by Palm and other companies are more or less in the same price range as this simputer.
Secondly, mismanagament is the name of the game for the Indians. They might make shit but selling it is another matter.
Those people who have 200, 400 $ to spend are *very* brand aware.
They know the fucking difference between a palm, handspring, sony or the zaurus.
Thirdly, if these simputer people had any brains, they could know it made more financial and business sense to import second hand pda's or outsource their pda needs from taiwan.
If the customs duty was the problem, it could setup a factory to assemble or make the pdas but here is a problem*.
Fourth, *There is not much fucking DEMAND in India for pda's.
In the US about 4 million pda's are sold every year. In India, the number of PC's sold is LESS than that. The number of notebooks is even more pathetic(60,000 as to 5 million in the US).
So unless you have a decent demand, how are you going to be able to justify your R&D costs? It doesn't matter if that pda is developed in india or mongolia.
Making 5,000-10,000 pda's is just *not* economical.
It would be better if the indian govt setup a scheme for notebooks like the thai govt. But don't worry, thats not going to happen. The indian govt has its hands tied up in so many other bullshit stuff that worrying about who gets pda's and notebooks is the least of its worries.
The Solo Computer fits part of the bill. It's ruggedized, uses ultra-low power (it can run on a solar panel), and it runs RISCOS, not Windows, so it won't get infected with worms.
A.R. Nemmer
The idea when they developed the simputer (which was by some college professors and students, not a company) was that it would be bought in bulk by some agency, like a co-operative or an NGO, and rented out at a pretty low rate to those who need it. In this way, the idea was that a farmer could take it into the field and record any necessary things about his crops, a milk vendor could use it on her daily rounds and so on. Somehow, I doubt that the 486 you'd give these people would do anything to help here. And like someone else said, these things are meant to be rugged, and used in a very harsh environment. BTW, a decent (new) computer here costs about Rs. 25000, and the original cost of the Simputer (before it was bought and taken over) was Rs. 10000, which is not really that much for buying in bulk by a co-operative.
It's a mistake to look at it in terms of a PC, like we're all used to.
subject says it all
The Peninsula Linux Users Group (PenLUG) will be hosting a talk on the Simputer at their September 25th meeting down near Redwood City, in the SF Bay Area.
The same speaker will be visiting the Linux Users' Group of Davis (LUGOD) on October 20th, near Sacramento, Calif.
Please not everybody behind a computer all the time.
...when you use it as a shovel. But they do make neato roof tiles if you have enough of them.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Electricity is more expensive in third world countries. Older computers are quite energy inefficient for their speed. The ARM chip, used in simputers, was designed to be a low power device, thus lowering the running costs of the machine.http://www.slashdot.org/
Why is that whenever something technologically advanced comes out of India like the Moon Shot, or Simputer people always say indians should concentrate on basic needs like food, clothing...?
Is it a bias against india as a whole?
or is it the mentality that all countries except USA is a third world country?
-------- Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate -- the bombs always hit the ground.