Indian Company Shows Off Sub-$200 Laptop

geo_2677 writes "The Indian company which came out with the Simputer has now come with a PC which cost roughly INR 10,000; that's just about US $200. The project was backed by the Indian government R&D department Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)." Geo2677 points out an article on the low-cost computer at hinduonline.net and another at the Times of India, and writes "The new PC is Linux-based and has office applications, a browser and audio/video capabilities. With a keyboard that can be rolled up, it looks pretty sleek. A U.S. company is already using it in pilot projects, and many more have shown interest. The Indian government hopes that this will push the PC revolution to the masses. It aimed for home users and small businesses/shops. The PC penetration in India is very low, at a measly 13 million, due to the high costs involved."

Comments

Ok, so, no storage...

[garcia]

It will have no hard disk but will have built-in memory and facility to plug in memory cards for any storage over and above that provided for in the built-in memory. It will not have games. High-speed computing is ruled out. The reasoning is that "while adding to the cost, these are of no use to many users.''

The one link is slashdotted already and the other doesn't say how much memory it has built-in. Yeah, it's sub-$200 until you realize that you have to pay another $150+ for a decent sized memory "stick" (or two or three).

Re:Ok, so, no storage...

[Roger_Wilco]

Give me a break.

The first hard disk we had was 20 MB, and it was huge when you consider only a few executables and text files. Granted, we ran Stacker on it to compress the contents and approximately double the capacity.

When my brother went to university, he replaced his 40 MB disk with a 560 MB; unfortunately, his BIOS only supported 512 MB, so his new disk wasted more space than the old disk had available.

We had a word processor, spreadsheet, drawing program, and so on with only a 20 MB drive. Heck, we ran a BBS. 512 MB of disk would feel like heaven, with appropriate software. I've had useful GNU/Linux installations on disks smaller than that.

Also featured on public radio

[DaveInAustin]

The radio show Marketplace has a http://members.aol.com/adnascar/thepark.html> story about the same machine. Not much details in the story. It doesn't mention linux, but says "it doesn't do windows".

Re:Also featured on public radio

[GweeDo]

Did you mean marketplace.publicradio.org?

their website here:

[t0mhannen]

http://www.ncoretech.com/mobilis/index.html with pics and info

Numbers numbers numbers

[mattmentecky]

First off, not to nitpick but the title of the article is misleading. The laptop is not sub-$200, 10,000INR is $230 http://www.xe.com/ucc/

The PC penetration in India is very low, at a measly 13 million, due to the high costs involved

Although a $230 laptop is great for people in developed nations unfortunately it is still in the realm of high cost for someone in India.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ us.html
The GDP per capita in America - $40,000

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ in.html
GDP per capita in India - $3,100

For someone in America, hell a $2,000 computer would be 1/20th of income, while a $230 computer in India is 1/13th.

Re:Just to note..

[GweeDo]

The cheapest "Alternative OS" desktop from Dell is $319 and that includes no monitor. Would you like to prove your claim?

Re:Interesting..

[harrkev]

Back in my day, I remember having 640x480 and being grateful for such high-resolution graphics.

You are spoiled by today's systems. So am I. I run 1600x1200 every day. But if you run 0x0 every day because you don't have a computer, 640x480 seems beautiful.

Don't forget that people used to do useful work on a 80x25 mono screen without graphics. No photoshop, but good enough to word processing to drive a daisy-wheel printer. This thing is bound to be at least as powerful as a Pentium-120. And a Pentium 120 (with 24MB and a 1.2Gb HD) got me my Master's degree by running Matlab and Protel.

Nice looking pics of the laptop

[shyampandit]

Here are some good looking pics of the laptop. Im not sure you can call it a laptop though, it looks more like a hybrid version of a pda and laptop. New segment?

Check out http://news.com.com/Photos+Low-cost+computing+with +style/2009-1005_3-5701496.html

I'm skeptical, but not for the usual reasons

[shm]

I've tried to buy Encore's Simputer. They're not really into retail or for that matter anything close to "consumer electronics" as we understand the term. They like to sell stuff "vertically" - i.e. they use their Simputer as a platform for specific applications. Look for a link to their handheld military version with GPS etc. Very cool.

I would expect them to do something similar with this device.

You can see a bit of that happening already with the reference to the US company which is planning on using this for some kind of security application.

Also, they are a very Linux centric shop.

Re:hmmm.... piracy

[corngrower]

I'll bet your right about it using an ARM chip. I'ld bet it's one of Sharp's chips. The chip has an onboard LCD driver, although it's limited to a 1024x640 resolution, if i recall. It's also got PS/2 compatible ports, serial ports, USB ports, and probably enough flash for a bios of some sort. In effect, all you'ld need to add is some sort of memory, and some supporting components to build a thoroughly usable PC.

I'm sorry, but I didn't see anything in the pictures that would convince me that it was a Windows OS I was looking at.