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India Will Show Its $10 Laptop Prototype

Posted by timothy on from the better-than-a-chicken-in-every-pot dept.

Tech Ticker writes "The Indian Government last year announced the development of a cheap $10 laptop, but was later rectified as $100 laptop. Now the government has announced that HRD minister Arjun Singh will unveil the prototype of a Rs. 500 ($10) computer. The computer is developed by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai. No specifications were revealed but DNA, a daily newspaper, has mentioned that it will be small and portable, will feature Wi-Fi, LAN, and expandable memory, and will operate on 2 watts of power."

6 of 374 comments (clear)

  1. I hope they succeed. by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't see why Negroponte's OLPC project didn't succeed before. I can buy a netbook on Newegg for 250$... yet a laptop with a quarter of the power and less functionality can't be built for less than 200$ for the OLPC.

    Best of luck to India.

    --
    while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
    1. Re:I hope they succeed. by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I can buy a netbook on Newegg for 250$... yet a laptop with a quarter of the power and less functionality can't be built for less than 200$ for the OLPC.

      The OLPC's laptop may have a quarter of the processing power of your $250 netbook, but it also only consumed a quarter of the current. Price and performance were not the only factors considered when designing the XO-1.

      Had he done that he would have sold enough of them to get them into the field and had money to continue development and produce them faster.

      Open sales are great if you have the manufacturing capacity to deliver them, but the XO-1 project didn't. I guess you weren't involved in the "Give One, Get None" debacle of 2007; I didn't receive mine until mid-Spring 2008 because of their supply chain and distribution issues.

  2. Ignore IP licensing and engineering costs by Overzeetop · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That'll save you a bundle right there. If you write the engineering off as a total loss after you take the first corporation bankrupt and then you stiff the IP owners on royalties when you build them, you'll be on the way to getting it done. It will be flimsy, not include batteries (for 2W you can buy rechargeables), and have a very poor screen, and the $10 won't include packaging, marketing, distribution, or profit. The QA will be poor too, so there will be lots of failures, but at that price point most won't bother to send it back for repairs.

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  3. Re:Where is China's innovation? by nbharatvarma · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have seen IPhone rip-offs for Rs. 2500/-. At the current rate of exchange, it would be around $50. These phones don't even have IMEI numbers and the government has banned the phones for that reason.
    I have seen the phone in action and it works just fine.
    I am guessing you will never get these mobiles in the U.S. :)

    --
    ... and I shall strike upon thee with great vegeance, furious anger and a slightly positive karma.
  4. Re:Imagine... by aonaran · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Dad made it a condition of the sale that they not put the dealer sticker on it.

    "but they all have the sticker, we put it on as soon as they get to the lot" said the dealer.

    "You do not, you trade cars with other lots and they don't want your sticker on a car they sell" Dad said.

    "But I'm not allowed to let a car leave here without it"

    "Then you don't get my sale"

    He got the car, and there was no sticker on it.

  5. Re:Imagine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ok... 2W each required for power. $1000 buys you 100 of them, max RAM 2GB. So total power consumption for 100 laptops = 200W, or less than one desktop PC.

    Buy a some cheap NAS and a few $30 Gb switches at BestBuy.

    Run ESXi (if you can) on each (free license). Run 4 Linux-based VMs at 512MB each on each laptop. Throw as many laptops as you can into HA/DRS clusters.

    Configure each Linux VM as a beowulf node if you like, or not. Who cares, you're maximizing/balancing the resources on all 100 machines, do what you like with them.

    You now have about 400 Linux VMs running on about $1500 worth of hardware.

    Poor Man's Datacenter for about the price of one gaming PC. Oh sorry, you'd probably need at least one decent-sized room fan somewhere nearby too, $30 at Home Depot.