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$10 Laptop Downgraded By Reality; Now Fancy Storage Device
Ian Lamont writes "The news last week that the Indian government was working on a $10 laptop was too good to be true. It turns out that the project is actually a wireless-enabled storage device, not a laptop." Update: 02/04 21:36 GMT by T : Always-illuminating Liliputing has a short article with a picture of the device.
Couldn't they just have said it was a glorified USB mem stick? Why the hoopla? Oh, yeah, no one would have cared otherwise. Smart.
So, who else is shocked that Team $10 laptop didn't actually have the magic bullet? No hands? Hmm.
Although the new form of the widget is rather fuzzy, I don't think I understand the point. Very low cost computers, designed with the particular attributes of low budget education in mind, are something that hasn't seen much market focus, and are thus a logical target for a special development program. Mass storage, though, has been cheapened and commodified with ruthless efficiency by the mainstream tech market. As have wireless communications mechanisms(GSM is super cheap on the WAN side, and for LAN/PAN you have zigbee, bluetooth, and wifi, depending on your budget). In either case, I'd be shocked if a special charity R&D project could outpace the standard R&D driven by people's desire for cheap gadgets.
Perfectly respectable 2gig USB drives can be had, retail, quantity one, now, for under 10 dollars. If sneakernet isn't good enough, wireless chipsets can also be had for under 10 dollars a unit. What niche, exactly, does this thing fill?
More interesting are, going by the photo, 3 cables going out of the device. Any logical reason a wireless storage device would need 3 cables? Or any more than power supply for that matter?