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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."
Sign me up for one. Maybe 5.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
Now the only question left is: when does it come to a shop near me?
...but what kind? TFA didn't make any mention of it (or any specs, for that matter). Anyone have any additional info on this thing?
Living With a Nerd
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/
No specs at all. How fast is its processor? How much memory? Is it touch enabled? TFA doesn't say.
Free Martian Whores!
I mean just doing a quick scan of the article it makes it sound like it's more for Indians (dot, not feather) and other 3rd worlders. You know, people that can't blow a thousand bucks on a computer. If it helps improve their standard of living more power to them. (Hopefully it gets further than that One Laptop thing.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
but at least my dream of having a stack of "PADDs" piled up on my desk (Star Trek TNG style) may finally come true!
I have the communicator, now for a working tricorder.....
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
India isn't trying to sell you anything. From the article:
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
It may suck compared to what you and I are used to, but it's better than nothing at all.
I imagine those that will be using them will sing a slightly different tune than you do.
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?
I think this is a big deal. Who really believes that outsourcing technology operations to India and China does not have a long-term consequence? With time, India and China will become innovators -- if they have not already. Reportedly, China has already built the world's second-fastest supercomputer, and is fabricating its own chips (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/science/01compute.html).
Imagine, now, young people thoughout the world writing software. What platform would they choose? If I was growing up in India and had an accessible computer for $35, I probably would not want to pay a whole lot more for a Windows computer.
Maybe this tablet does not quite have it right, technologically. But it is a step forward and an indication of intention on the part of the Indian government.
Looking at the articles and pics of it, it does indeed have a colour screen.
And your statement brings out my real question:
If india can make a working tablet for $35 that, while probably underpowered, can do web, email, and wordprocessing,
Why are the big companies cheapest products $200 or more?
Hopefully, after (if) these get rolled out in India, the other manufacturers will start competing a little harder.
Also, if this Indian tablet supports flash, I'll have a nice little chuckle.
"lt;dr" is the correct response to most of my posts.
I found myself having fainted for dehydration outside a small village in Uttar Pradesh. I came to but was apparantly delirious, blathering wildly about my deadlines - but it was my gestures which were to change my life from there on. My hands, so used to typing out at the desk, had begun to reanact keystrokes in the same manner as the fellow who plays Mozart's hands dash across the pianoforte keys in Amadeus.
A peasent stumbled across my slumped corpse; he last asked me what I was doing in a business suit in the glaring heat of the northern hemisphere in late June (this was about a month ago) . Fortunately he had water, and was able to drag me in to a nearby village. I apparantly spoke about all sorts of computing stuff. I even confessed I dreamt I left comments on tech sites but woke up of course to find none - sombrely the young man, a mere kid in his 20s, got up and left without even a word.
The man knew what was up; after my delirium had passed and I was coherant - a small, $35 Indian Tablet Computer lay infront of me. 'It is the best thing we can do instead of a keyboard' - said Ranvir, who had taken the exact funds from my wallet in exchange for it in the local tech market close to the Ganges. It was then my capitalist attitude morphed into a centre-left smorgasbord from a simple act of kindness. Of course it didn't make economic sense to rescue my incapicitated husk...it did not square with the Rand stuff I'd worshipped so libertarianistically.
Upon squaring together an Internet connection with mere gaffer tape and a mini-co axial carefully hammered into the 3.5mm audio jack...I was on. The world opened up, and as I sat in that little squalid shack which was my temporary home...blogging became something completely new. The egoistic, day-to-day mundane became the selfless and vivid recollection of events in the village who had granted me honorary citizen status. I got to know what broadband would feel like at 56k speed, but not due to poor latency...but instead economy components. Upon blogging my experience with the good samaritan and the villagers, a commenter posted:
"Hey man you should be like the chieftain or leader or some crap? Lead these folks into a revolutionary tech thing! -- Lance"
It was that night that I near-emptied my bank account buying 200 Tablets at $35 - that's $7000 bucks. I gave a tablet to every villager bar a few spares. It was then I set about making speeches about online rights. Having educated the villagers to open source rights, technology issues, we set about changing the world. Our first stop was a pilgrimage to the Nepalese steppes to sabotage a Dalai Lama press conference for publicity, but as about fifty of us packed up to go I received a call from David in editorial back home - my HTC Android! It was still on!
"Pete? Pete. Hi we need you back here in England as soon as possible there's a few urgents things to cover. Can you fly back tomorrow afternoon?"
A tear had already dropped from my face to the Tablet on the nearby bed. Two villagers had entered and were looking at me intently as I had my conversation in English: "Yeah, yeah I can make it...can you wire some cash over; I had some unexpected expenses and..."
Dave was in a hurry and brusque: "Okay, money will be in your account within a few hours. Be back here Tuesday morning - deadlines to fill and all that. Your computer has been pining for you I swear....later man."
Tablet PCs in India changed my life, and though my plans to become the head of a village failed and the depression built upon leaving...the experience shall never leave me.
I can't be the only one that's tired of hearing about them. And I'm willing to bet that the majority of them will never be in production.
Then again, I'm firmly in the netbook camp, so a tablet wouldn't appeal to me.
You can get a second-hand tablet for how much?
I scored an X41 Tablet for about $150 total, with two worn batteries and a busted up stylus. Not a touch screen, but a tablet. Works fine, but that's not $35. I spend more than that for the recovery disk set. Yes, I am that obsessed.
For even $100, this gives Negroponte's dream a run for the money.
India strives for self-sufficiency. It;s not cheap to them, it's affordable and sustainable.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Well, sometimes government gets involved because the private business are too busy running around each other to show any kind of creativity and explore a new market. That is not aways, mind you; not even most of the time. It is just that some times that happens.
Rethinking email
I think you need to keep yourself better informed.
Firstly, the salary for an IT job in India is somewhere around 15-20% what it is here in the UK - even so, someone on that salary in India is earning a good wage. It therefore makes sense that electronics goods would also be proportionately priced.
Secondly, there is a stronger cultural link between wealth and status in India - a man on a high salary will have have no shortage of potential wives knocking at his door - but they are also less materialistic than us. Therefore, the importance you and I might place on the functionality of a device is perhaps less important to an Indian. So please don't judge everyone else by our standards.
Thirdly, India is not known for exporting high-tech goods to the West, it is a country aimed at providing a cheaper-to-hire English-speaking service industry workforce to the West. And because I detect some sour grapes over outsourcing in the tone of your message, please target your wrath at the rich Western CEOs pocketing the cost differential between hiring staff in the USA or Europe than in India - after all, if somebody offered you a higher paid job than what you're in at the moment, you'd at least consider it even if you didn't take it. So why should anyone in India be any different?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
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.
If outsourcing has taught me anything, this is going to BSOD unless you follow the step-by-step script that comes with the tablet.
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.
The middle-class in India thinks it is by education. Which happens to be largely correct. Poverty and hunger are not isolated problems individually, they are usually the result of:
How would you then eliminate those? By providing opportunities; by opening up avenues; by making people aware that the world has a lot of other things which they can explore to realize, recognize their own talents, and empower themselves. So these kind of computer/technology distribution helps. Maybe not directly, but surely in a forceful way.
Hey, I would say that if India does manage to get it out of the marketing hype, this should be mass-produced, (maybe talents from here in USA can make it even more better by applying current advances) and sold universally to every country where people struggle.
Compare to this which is at $85 in volume without shipping, I'm not sure how it can get the cost down to $10. Some very cheap ARM with integrated flash/ram still cost $10.
It does support flash http://www.sakshat.ac.in/
Anytime that the government gets involved, it leads to unsustainable projects with no real market, no real innovation, and poor implementation to get a government contract and free money.
Look at Ethanol, sounds great, gas from plants, renewable and good for the environment... Except for the fact it takes more energy to make it than the ethanol contains. But of course the government subsidizes it which leads people to grow corn for ethanol rather than for feed and so taxpayers not only have to pay higher food costs but also have to pay for the subsidizes for a project that makes no sense.
Rather than looking towards good ways to tap a market, government involvement leads to lower quality and total disregard for the target market.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
1. Build a prototype mock-up.
2. Hold press conference about a $35 tablet running Linux.
3. Wait for Microsoft to offer $$$ to switch to Windows.
4. Profit
??
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.
Or not. Last year, Indian officials announced a $10 laptop for the masses, which turned out to be much more than $10, and nowhere close to a laptop.
I wouldn't expect much from their "$35 tablet" announced when the OLPC XO-3 tablet is getting some attention.
I already feel quite penetrated by advertisers. I don't think I can handle "greater penetration"
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Well, this might sound paradoxical, but actually, even 'less developed areas' in India have cellphone connectivity. Those backward areas have patchy electricity supply - the power goes off for almost 10-15 hours per day, on average, in some backward areas. But there is hardly any part of the country that is not covered by GSM cellphones. Sounds paradoxical, but that's how it is - almost everyone carries a phone. Given that, I guess they'll browse through the GSM signal...
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
FTA: Mamta Varma, a ministry spokeswoman, said falling hardware costs and intelligent design make the price tag plausible.
Through divine providence, I sadly predict this product will sell well in the United States, especially among the non-technical.