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India's $35 Tablet Computer
NotBornYesterday was one of many readers sending in news that the Indian government has announced it is helping to develop a $35 tablet computer running Linux. "India has unveiled the prototype of a $35 basic touchscreen tablet aimed at students, which it hopes to bring into production by 2011. The government plans to subsidize the tablets so the cost to students could be $20; and eventually, they hope the cost will fall to $10 per unit. India's human resource development minister, Kapil Sibal, says, 'The motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35, including memory, display, everything.' Using a memory card instead of a hard drive, and running a Linux OS, the designers have managed to keep the price low, and are now looking for manufacturing partners. The tablet can be used for functions like word processing, Web browsing, and video conferencing. It has a solar power option too, which is important in India's less developed areas, though that add-on costs extra."
Do go to the AP link if you want to "see" it. Funny that they start their story, "It looks like an iPad." The next line should have been, "But I guess you'll never know."
Pics are on the second link here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/07/23/india.thirty.five.dollar.laptop/
The car does exist you pretentious moron!!! it's called the TATA Nano and it's running on the roads!! do a friggin' google search! and there was never a sub-$100 shuttle!! atleast much better than the stupid NASA running losses!!!
You mean the Tata Nano?
ok sorry. Posted too early. 2GB solid state disk with 32 GB addon. 2 watts power consumption. Solar panel addon (price not included in base cost). & inch touch screen. Got this from http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2010/07/23/23-tablet-pc-unveiled-in-india/
You know that is a topic that is currently being fiercely debated in the civil society of India.
Just like here in America, you have people who do not want government to be involved at all and then there are those who support government takeover.
However, since the Indian economy has largely been a pseudo-capitalist economy and largely socialist until the early 1990s, the government gets away by doing this without any rigorous study of whether it should be doing it or handing it to private enterprise..
I suppose as capitalism strengthens over time, and people realize that entrepreneurship is in their best interest, you will find this debate getting intense. Especially since the country is already a democracy, and as people become assured of their basic necessities, they start questioning the opportunities afforded to them.
According to Engadget, it has 2 GB of RAM (see http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/35-tablet-from-india-looks-to-be-worth-every-paisa-video/ )
But I think a lot of price considerations have to do with the fact that most westerners aren't going to buy something with a price point that is "too" cheap. People are used to paying $200 for even the cheapest notebooks/netbooks/tablets, if people see a $35 one, they are probably just going to buy the more expensive one to save on "quality" even if they are the same device.
Of course, this was the same India that created the $10 non-laptop-component-printer that cost $30... So take any reports from cheap electronics in India with a grain of salt...
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
And here's the official website http://www.sakshat.ac.in/
Quoting from http://news.softpedia.com/news/Indian-Government-Unveils-Quite-Powerful-10-Tablet-148828.shtml """ At the heart of the 10.5-inch tablet lies an ARM chip. The exact chip set to be used has not been disclosed, but it is known that 2GB of memory will be present to back it up. The display is a color touchscrenn with multi-touch support. Furthermore, the configuration includes cloud storage, 10/100 Ethernet, WiFi b/g , a so-called highly-customized operating system and even support for Adobe Flash. Thus, there will be no issues regarding online videos and interactive educational content. Finally, the device comes with a digital camera and compatibility with OpenOffice.org documents, Adobe PDF and various multimedia formats. """
An ARPANET would have been born and morphed internet with or without government support, its just in the late 60s early 1970s few people owned computers really powerful enough to go online and do anything meaningful. ARPANET was formed not because of some great government insight that private enterprise doesn't have, it was simply because no one else owned enough computers to make it be meaningful.
And how is it worth it for the science? You burn more fossil fuels trying to make the ethanol than you can create in the ethanol! You can't just add more energy to the ethanol, its like in the 1990s when dot-com businesses would sell things at a loss and make up for it in "volume", only rather than a dot-com you have no money invested in it is instead the government stealing money out of your paycheck.
Sugar Cane is another thing totally fucked up by governments in allowing massive tariffs to be placed on it whenever you import it, whenever the government messes with private enterprise, the consumers lose. By placing barriers to free trade in place, it pretty much means that corn syrup is cheaper than sugar cane because the US simply doesn't have enough places to grow sugar cane and because of artificial barriers its nearly impossible to import it.
As for algae, it is in its early stages, it is certainly something to watch.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
When we talk about a $35 tablet computer, "average price" is not even remotely in the picture. It makes no sense for you to compare averages when we're talking about something extreme.
Don't like ebay? Palm IIIx runs for about $25 at Goodwill. $20 on Craigslist. And $15 at Weirdstuff(and places like it). But I don't know why you don't like ebay, there are a couple IIIx in good shape for $7 on there right now.
Here's a $75 Palm m500 on the same site you linked. Prefer color and WinCE? Dell Axim x51 runs for about $60 these days, which is coincidentally roughly what it would cost wholesale to produce with the same specs.
I have some idea what this stuff costs from working on the Kindle and other products, especially given that I actively tried to put together a minimalist low-cost tablet/ereader project. It is quite possible to get to a $35 BOM on a tablet computer, but I it won't be a very modern style tablet. sub-500MHz ARM9, no 3D acceleration, 128MB or less RAM, slow flash interface, poor battery life, not multi-touch, and the list goes on. I think with the right software it could be a practical gadget for the right purposes. But most people scoffed at me when I have proposed these kinds of minimalist devices at the places I've worked.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire